Tag:building=detached

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Public-images-osm logo.svg building = detached
Residential House USA.JPG
Description
A detached house: a free-standing residential building usually housing a single family. Show/edit corresponding data item.
Rendering in OSM Carto
Area building=yes.png
Group: buildings
Used on these elements
may be used on nodesshould not be used on waysmay be used on areas (and multipolygon relations)should not be used on relations (except multipolygon relations)
Useful combination
See also
Status: de facto

A detached house is a free-standing residential building usually housing a single family.

Known as a single-family home in the United States, a single-detached dwelling in Canada, a separate house in New Zealand and Maison individuelle in France.

If the building shares walls with another building (forming half of a semi-detached pair) then it should be rather tagged building=semidetached_house. The outline of a row of terraced houses is tagged building=terrace, while the individual house in such a terrace is tagged building=house + optional house=terraced.

Distinction from building=house

A detached house is a subset of a house where it is not connected to other houses. Tagging a detached house with building=house is generally seen as acceptable because it is a more general term, so it is a valid tag. Depending on the location, a building=house may be detached from other surrounding buildings and may contain multiple residences within, whereas there may be more of an assumption of a single residence within a detached house.

Alternate tagging

Some mappers prefer to map this as building=house + house=detached. As of August 2023 about 1/3 of uses of house=detached are in Ireland. In other countries the tag is mostly rare.

Photos

Possible tagging mistakes

If you know places with this tag, verify if it could be tagged with another tag.
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