Same asking price, both surveyed. The old one has a roof nobody can date and single skin bits at the back, the new one has a warranty with a few years left, thin walls and a render finish I do not understand. Neither survey said anything alarming, so this is a question about what each of them will ask me for over two decades rather than what is wrong today.
Old house, known failures, any trade can fix it. New house, unknown proprietary systems, one approved installer. Whichever you buy, budget a fund rather than hoping.
I have owned one of each in the same town. The old house asked for large, predictable, well understood sums: a roof, rewiring, damp work in one wall, all of which had a clear diagnosis and any competent trade could quote. The new build asked for small, irritating, badly documented ones: failed seals on units, a boiler that needed proprietary parts, and a render crack that nobody wanted to own once the warranty period lapsed. Over twenty years my old house cost more in total and never once left me not knowing who to call.
Find out the exact render system and whether the installer is still trading. If it is a proprietary system with one approved applicator locally, that is your answer.
Not knowing who to call is a cost I had not priced. The render is the bit that worries me most about the new one.
The planning number I use for either is roughly one percent of the property value a year averaged over a long period for maintenance, and the difference between houses is not the average, it is the lumpiness. New builds are quiet for the first decade then everything mechanical comes due at once, old houses spread it out and hand you one enormous item roughly every fifteen years. If you have a fund, the old house is fine, and if you would be borrowing for a roof, the new one is easier to live with.
Lumpiness rather than average is the framing I needed. We could absorb a slow drip and a roof would mean borrowing.
Bought new and made the mistake of being polite during the snagging period. There is a window where the builder fixes things and after it closes you are on your own, and I let three items drift past it because I did not want to be difficult about a door and some grouting. Those three items cost me real money later. If you buy the new one, write down everything in the first months and be relentlessly unpopular.
@coldsoak_kim · 2mo ago
I would resist deciding by decade at all. I have seen 1930s houses ruined by a 1990s extension and new builds put up by a careful small developer that are genuinely excellent. Variation within an era is larger than variation between eras, so what I would actually chase is who built it and what has been done to it since. Ask the neighbours in a new estate what has gone wrong for them, it takes an afternoon and tells you more than any survey.
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