tract house

Meaning

1. 1nouncountableAmerican

   One of many similar houses built quickly on a large piece of land by a single developer, usually in a suburb.

   Grammar: Plural: tract houses; often used with in a tract of houses or in a development.

   Patterns

   • a tract house in somewhere
   • a tract house development

   They bought a small tract house in a new suburb after the war.

   Rows of identical tract houses lined the street.

   Our tract house had a tiny yard and one garage.

Word forms

Common combinations

build tract houses

Developers built tract houses on the old farmland.

identical tract houses

Identical tract houses stretched for blocks.

tract house development

The tract house development has a community pool.

postwar tract house

They live in a postwar tract house.

buy a tract house

Many veterans could afford to buy a tract house.

Synonyms and how they differ

cookie-cutter house

Cookie-cutter house is more critical and stresses sameness, while tract house simply names a type of development.

development house

Development house is a plain description and less specific about the mass-built style.

suburban home

Suburban home refers to any house in a suburb, not necessarily a mass-produced one.

prefab

A prefab is built from factory-made parts, whereas a tract house is usually built on site in bulk.

Opposites

Word family

tract noun

a large area of land

tract housing noun

houses built in large similar groups

house noun

a building for living in

developer noun

a person or company that builds on land

Commonly confused: tract house or town house? tract house or tract (pamphlet)?

Practice

Make it your own

Write a sentence using “tract house”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.

Explore more words