A housing estate (or sometimes housing complex or housing development) is a group of homes and other buildings built together as a single development. The exact form may vary from country to country.

Popular throughout the United States and the United Kingdom, they are often areas of high-density, low-impact residences of single-family detached homes and often allow for separate ownership of each housing unit, for example through subdivision.

In major Asian cities, such as Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Singapore, Seoul, Taipei, and Tokyo, an estate may range from detached houses to high-density tower blocks with or without commercial facilities; in Europe and America, these may take the form of town housing, high-rise housing projects, or the older-style rows of terraced houses associated with the Industrial Revolution, detached or semi-detached houses with small plots of land around them forming gardens, and are frequently without commercial facilities and such.

In Central and Eastern Europe, living in housing estates is a common way of living. Most of these housing estates originated during the communist era because the construction of large housing estates was an important part of building plans in communist countries in Europe. They can be located in suburban and urban areas.

Accordingly, a housing estate is usually built by a single contractor, with only a few styles of house or building design, so they tend to be uniform in appearance.

A housing development is "often erected on a tract of land by one builder and controlled by one management." In the United Kingdom, the term is quite broad and can include anything from high-rise government-subsidised housing right through to more upmarket, developer-led suburban tract housing. Such estates are usually designed to minimise through-traffic flows and provide recreational space in the form of parks and greens.