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by rkangel12 hours ago |
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upvoteby Brendinooo5 hours ago|
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Having been around enough houses (in the US) to have a balanced opinion - I personally prefer older houses but

- older houses tend to be a lot more inefficient in their use of square footage

- the rooms inside tend to be a lot less open, and one man's "fun/quirky layout" is another man's "why do I have to go down a step then immediately go up a step to cross a hallway"

- and, I begrudgingly admit (as I don't like how they wreck house aesthetics) people really like big, attached garages

My overall suspicion is that when a lot of people say they like old houses, what they really mean is that they like buildings that look beautiful on the outside and, to a lesser extent, have a sense of being rooted in some kind of context.

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upvoteby jimnotgym1 hours ago|
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Cupboards, nooks and crannies are one of the things people like in an old house. They are often a side-effect of chimney and fireplace construction. A new house in the UK has nowhere to put anything!
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upvoteby freedomben8 hours ago|
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> but most people on the UK would prefer houses that were 100+ years old.

Why do most people prefer older houses?

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upvoteby rkangel7 hours ago|
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I think two reasons:

Character and history - they tend to be more individual and different, and have more character than the cookie cutter modern mass builds.

Solidity - they tend to be more stone and brick, instead of the timber framed buildings that are more common in new builds.

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upvoteby nly6 hours ago|
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Primairly because old houses are on bigger plots and allow for extensions and conversions.
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upvoteby freedomben6 hours ago|
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ah interesting! That's quite different from the areas I've lived in the US. If you're in or near city lines the lots on older houses are small. It's not uncommon to see .15 acre lots. Newer houses aren't much better, but you can see .2 to .25 acres relatively commonly, though those are nearly always on the outer city or outside city lines so it could just be proximity to the city that's the factor there rather than age.
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upvoteby happyopossum3 hours ago|
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That is highly location dependent. Many cities had/have large lots in older neighborhoods and have transitioned to zero-lot-line construction or smaller lots in the past 30-40 years as demand for housing grew.

In fact in most of the western US that’s the norm…

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upvoteby jimnotgym1 hours ago|
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The UKs green belt laws haven't helped here. Since you can't make the settlement bigger, the only course is to build in the gardens of houses with big gardens. In my view it has ruined many nice villages
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upvoteby PunchyHamster3 hours ago|
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I think there might be some survivorship bias there - the house that survived 100 years in state where people still want it probably was built well, the 100 years old ones that didn't were scrapped/rebuilt
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