New vs older houses

dvdrdl

Viewing houses at the minute i have noticed that the older buildings/ex council properties seem to be better built and of better materials than the new houses we have looked at.

I viewed a new apartment about 5 months old. The walls seemed to be hollow and all the woodwork looked like mdf mouldings.

I am now swaying towards getting an older property that may require a little more work initially but i think they will wear better in the long run.

Any thoughts on this?

googler

The majority of houses these days are built on a 'load-bearing timber frame' with any stonework merely what's called 'architectural brick' - i.e. brick that's put on for appearance's sake, and has no structural purpose.

There was a block of flats erected near me a couple of years ago. They laid the foundations and started putting up the timber frame. Then it started raining. They continued building the timber up. It rained a lot around that time - 'biblical rain', I call it - and before I knew where I was, there were four storeys of soaking wet timber frame right up to roof level with not a bit of metalwork or brickwork in sight.

Then the pallets of 'architectural brick' arrived, and again, in a trice, the frame was externally clad, and it looked to all intents and purposes as though it was built of the stuff.

I have no idea how they dried it out.

Contrast that with something from the beginning of the 1900s, with half-metre thick stone walls; solid timber doors and facings, etc, etc

Toby1990

On the sites I work on, we work for two builders mainly. When doing social housing or affordable housing they use timber frame, it's so quick it's unreal. But when doing private housing, expensive houses, then it's always brickwork and built to a high level and much more care taken, better bathrooms as standard, even part buy houses have the same fixings as social housing. Going back to them few months later, they look terrible.

They do build good houses still, but at a cost. I'd go old unless the house your buying has been built to last.

They don't dry them out lol, mold sets in sometimes really bad and they have heaters in the rooms to dry them out. it is ok by the time tenants move in though.

RedFraggle

In my experience older properties can require more upkeep; in that you often inherit the legacy of things not having been done properly and various parts or facilities (e.g. indoor bathrooms) have been added over the years; but they are better built and will be standing long after the new builds. I would always prefer an older property but when I was single and wanted a low maintenance property I bought a house built in the 80's and it cost me virtually nothing in maintenance for the 2.5 years I had it.

Davesnave

New build quality is an issue you can Google, or investigate on this site too. The well-known building companies all have their issues.

Like traditional build, there are good & bad timber framed houses. I'm not so sure that timber framed is more common than trad either, as they aren't around here, nor in the area I came from.

Any new build is likely to be more energy efficient than houses put up around the beginning of the 20th century, with their solid walls. Solidity doesn't mean efficiency; just look at the EPCs for a few Welsh farmhouses, and how little it's estimated they can be improved!

Council houses were well made because they had to conform to Parker Morris standards. Other houses built in the mid 20th century are as much a curate's egg as the many modern ones. For example, my last house, though it had cavity walls, actually had foundations only about 25cm deep. It also had a course of bricks below DPC which were commons, not engineering, and they were crumbling badly.......Happily, that's not my problem now.

I would say look at the house for what it is, not what era it comes from, but if energy efficiency is important to you, don't go back to before the 1950s. Also, remember that new builds aren't as spacious as their older counterparts £ for £, and that you'll pay a premium for anything brand new, which isn't likely to be re-couped in the near future.

Sensible_Jess

The expression "a curate's egg" originally meant something that is partly good and partly bad, but as a result is entirely spoiled. Modern usage has tended to change this to mean something having a mix of good and bad qualities.

It's only Monday morning and I've learnt something new today!!:T

BeauBelle

We purchased a brand new apartment in 2004 and thought it would be great, but once we moved in we found that we could hear all sounds from other flats in the area, we could hear our neighbours 2 floors down arguing in the evening and the walls were so flimsy we had trouble hanging anything on them.

There was also no built in storage and with the smaller footprint of the flat once we had wardrobes in the bedrooms there was only just room for a bed! All things we hadn't really considered.

We sold it 2 years later when we relocated for work at a small loss and purchased a 4 bed ex council 3 storey townhouse and have been here 6 years now. The walls are thicker so its much quieter, we have a garden, the rooms are bigger and we have masses of built in storage cupboards. It was built in the 1960's so not much character! but definatly much more than the new build.

I would agree with the poster who said that you inherit the previous owners shoddy work. Our vendor had an obsession with shelves, DH must have removed about 200 when we moved in. He also didn't like stripping wallpaper. In some rooms there were 3 layers of paper with paint on top!

We are currently re doing the original bathroom and when we pulled out the homemade boxing around the toilet (yuck!) we found that instead of fixing the toilet properly, the waste pipe is currently held on with gaffer tape and has been for meny years by the look of it!

Good luck with your search, but I would stick with an older house. We are considering moving again now that this house is nearly finished and we won't even contemplate a new build again!

BB
xx

System

Sensible_Jess wrote: »

It's only Monday morning and I've learnt something new today!!:T

I think the point of the original anecdote is that it depends entirely what you are willing to put up with.
The curate did not want to offend the bishop so he assured him that parts of the egg were all right. For him, in those circumstances, they were. He wasn't eating the egg because he needed good food, he was eating it because he wanted to ingratiate himself with his superior.

If you buy a house with a mouldy wooden frame you are buying it because it has a roof and you can afford it. But not if you wanted it to last 100 years or more in your family.

amblondon

Leaving build quality aside, new builds generally (and this is obviously a huge generalisation!) seem to me to have the following issues versus older houses:
- rooms too small as a consequence of trying to fit too many rooms into the same footprint...usually bathrooms.
- lack of storage - this is a big issue! Rooms are generally rectangular so none of the recesses / alcoves associated with older properties, where you find those old, odd cupboards which you can stick so much stuff into. No cellars or outside stores either
- lower ceilings. Combined with smaller rooms, makes newer houses seem so much more cramped than older houses. Like living in a rabbit hutch (I imagine. Haven't tried that myself).

Cheers

missindecisive

we live in an older property and have done quite happily for the last 15 years. Here are some of the issues we have had to address...

Evidence of woodboaring insects in the loft (had to have treatment)
Various patches of damp due to condensation/leaking gutters/defective render
2 leaking chimneys which both required lining with a flue
New windows & doors, (all were single glazed-some rotten)
New fireplaces..this first started when we moved in with our 1 year old baby and discovered that the previous owners had managed with no hot water, their back boiler was broken.
New central heating system
Installed a new kitchen- the old one was atleast 30 years old
New bathrooms
remedial plaster works
Hacking off existing exterior render & replaced with new(the whole house)
Hacking off some of the bitumen floor (it actually came up the walls to skirting board height-there were no wooden skirting boards)
Aswell as exstending the house 3 times to accommadate our ever increasing family !! omg my husband is an absolute saint - he did it all himself and he's not even a builder by trade!!

but now for the positives;
we have a fantastic garden, really big for the kids to play
we live off the beaten track..tried life on an estate earlier on and it was'nt for us
our house has bags of character, im really proud of what we have achieved
even in the current market, we have equity in the house due to buying cheap, maximising the potential, doing most of the work ourselves, and working very hard at it.
One thing to bear in mind for the future, is that houses of a certain age don't have very substantial footings and often have no cavity's in the walls (just a double skin of bricks), so therefore, some older houses like ours (built 1898) would'nt be able to support the weight of a loft conversion and can sometimes be troublesome with odd little patches of damp that never seem to completely go away. However, you have to weigh it all up, its a bit like running an older car I would say..there may always be little maintenance jobs cropping up but you still see brand new cars on the back of that AA truck on the motor way!! iyswim !
good luck:rotfl:

tyler80

Some of the newer properties we looked at didn't score too badly on internal space and storage but outside space was awful, parking often not in a logical place in relation to the house and if you wanted a shed that was your garden gone.

So space rather than build quality was the concern for us.