A common area is, in real estate or real property law, the "area which is available for use by more than one person..." The common areas are those "within a building that are available for common use by all tenants, (or) groups of tenants and their invitees." In Texas and other parts of the United States, it is "An area inside a housing development that is owned by all residents or by an overall management structure which charges each tenant for maintenance and upkeep."
Common areas often exist in apartments, gated communities, condominiums, cooperatives and shopping malls.
In any situation where there is a tenancy in common, all the tenants in common collectively own the common areas.
This differs from a commons or common land, as used in English law, which is owned by one person, but which may be used by a group of persons.
Read more about Common Area: Examples, Case Law, Residence Halls, Business Spaces, Real Estate Taxation of Common Areas
Famous quotes containing the words common and/or area:
“If we use common words on a great occasion, they are the more striking, because they are felt at once to have a particular meaning, like old banners, or everyday clothes, hung up in a sacred place.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“Whatever an artist’s personal feelings are, as soon as an artist fills a certain area on the canvas or circumscribes it, he becomes historical. He acts from or upon other artists.”
—Willem De Kooning (b. 1904)