In American English

In American English, the distinction between rental apartments and condominiums is that while rental buildings are owned by a single entity and rented out to many, condominiums are owned individually, while their owners still pay a monthly or yearly fee

for building upkeep. Condominiums are often leased by their owner as rental apartments. A third alternative, the cooperative apartment building (or “co-op”), acts as a corporation with all of the tenants as shareholders of the building. Tenants in

cooperative buildings do not own their apartment, but instead own a proportional number of shares of the entire cooperative. As in condominiums, cooperators pay a monthly fee for building upkeep. Co-ops are common in cities such as New York, and have gained some popularity in other larger urban areas in the U.S.

In British English the usual word is “flat”, but apartment is used by property developers to denote expensive ‘flats’ in exclusive and expensive residential areas in, for example, parts of London such as Belgravia and Hampstead. In Scotland, it is called a block of flats or, if it is a traditional sandstone building, a tenement, a term which has a negative connotation elsewhere.

In India, the word flat is used to refer to multi-storey dwellings that have lifts.[6]