New house vs Old house

Galego

Looking at the way which some new estates (houses) have been built, I really wonder whether someone could be better off buying a relative old house (older than 20 years).

What are your thoughts on the above statement? What are the cons and pros of New vs Old houses?

pwurple

I have been looking for about three years for a place to buy. We kept an open mind, but we have some requirements which seem to completely rule out new houses.

Garden of reasonable size. We grow some veg, and like to bbq.
Garage. We have motorbikes and want to keep them out of view of thieves.

Modern houses don't seem to come with either of those.

Cuddlesworth

I know this is going to sound like a bit of a cop out, but you need to take a critical look at each property without some form of age bias. There are plenty of badly built and well built houses going right through the years. There is no easy generic answer unless you begin to specify the estate and manage to get somebody comfortable with the houses to give a opinion.

L1011

A new house is probably, but not guaranteed to be, warmer and more air tight, and not need any expensive upgrades for a while. Also may be easier to get a mortgage on going on my experience.

An older house is probably, but not guaranteed to be, bigger for its number of bedrooms and more solidly built.

But there were absolute tips built in the 80s and very well built houses built recently.

An old house (I'd barely call 20 old, though) will be heading towards the point where you'll need to think about the wiring; if the central heating was fitted at new it'll probably be a few years out from really needing a new boiler, etc. On a more minor level it'll probably have one power socket in each room too.

The best of both worlds would be an older house that's had a lot of money spent on it, in my opinion anyway.

I bought old and had-been-heavily-upgraded although the last owner hadn't spent a penny on it in 15 years, so I got a modern-ish central heating system (no storage heaters like it came with) and insulation but single glazed PVC windows, but I also paid four fifths of feck all for it... amazing what a small bit of grime and a skipload of manky carpets does to an asking price!

ABajaninCork

If I had the choice, I'd always go for an older property. Anything built in the Celtic Tiger era by and large would be ruled out.
Too many lash-ups, houses crammed on to plots, and some of the building work is questionable.