A home is where a person lives. A home can be a house, or a flat, or a luxury apartment, a hut in a 'favela', a tent in the desert, a caravan, an igloo... if you live there, it's your home. A house is a specific type of building where a person or family lives. It's usually one, two or three storeys for the whole family or household, and each has its own front door. Some houses stand detached from all other buildings, while others may be attached to their neighbours' house on one or both sides. Just google image 'house' and you'll see some pictures of what English speakers understand when we hear the word.

In United States usage the meanings overlap a lot. "House" emphasizes the physical building. "Home" emphasizes its use as a place for living. "My house is made of wood and built in 1917." "We've been traveling for nine weeks and just got home yesterday." I see that ahdictionary.org list the first three meanings of "home" as: 1. A place where one lives; a residence. 2. The physical structure within which one lives, such as a house or apartment. 3. A dwelling place together with the family or social unit that occupies it; a household. a. An environment offering security and happiness. "Home" is connected with warm feelings about people and families. In the U.S. real estate agents ALWAYS refer to houses as "homes" in order to evoke those feelings! A famous poem by Edgar Guest has contributed a saying to our language. The saying is usually misquoted as "It takes a heap of living to make a house a home." Guest actually wrote: "It takes a heap o’ livin’ in a house t’ make it home" He also says--I think I'll "translate" the dialect: "Within the walls there’s got to be some babies born..." "You've got to sing and’ dance for years, you've got to romp and play, And learn to love the things you have by using them each day..." "You've got to love each brick and stone from cellar up to dome: It takes a heap of living in a house to make it home."

Home is where you live, or if you are traveling, where you want to go back to. A house is a building that someone might call their home. However the word 'house' just means a type of building, meant for one family to live in. If you have a building that many families live in, you would call them apartments (if rented), or condominiums (if owned). All three words are types of buildings. Home isn't a type of building. It is an idea. The place you go back to, the place you want to stay. You could say "I see many houses", but you would not say "All these buildings are my homes".

House mean thing. Home mean family.