There are a lot of efficiency, insulative, and electrical system improvements that have been made since then, assuming the developer didn’t cut all the corners.
Yeah, it's swings and roundabouts. We recently modernised my grandmother's terraced house. Positive points:
- high ceilings and windows. Predated Parker-Morris: if you can find one those are absolutely the best. Modern houses are horribly shrunken by comparison, especially when we sell by bedroom count rather than area
- good sound insulation
- solid brick construction (although no cavity wall insulation)
Minus points:
- very leaky of heat
- lead piping embedded in concrete floors
- ancient electrical system (already reworked a few times)
- perilously steep staircase
- bathroom had been retrofitted in the 50s. Yes, the house was built without an inside bathroom, I think it only just had an inside toilet.
I have the opposite problem in the US. All the houses are too big, with high ceilings and giant 2 story foyers. Other than advertising that you can afford higher heating and cooling costs, I don’t understand the purpose of these high ceilings. And the 2 story foyer means the second floor is constantly too warm and 1st floor is too cold as the heat has no reason to stay at the bottom.
> And the 2 story foyer means the second floor is constantly too warm and 1st floor is too cold as the heat has no reason to stay at the bottom.
I understand your nitpicking. It was almost a deal breaker for me when we bought our new home. But we have a zoned system regulating the single unit we would have had regardless. There's no temperature difference now between floors. And with the ability to shut off the upstairs until bedtime, we use about 1/3 more energy to heat/cool 3.5x the space.
Though much older homes do exist, in the US (they're using a "$" in their comment) 50 years +/- 10 years is pretty commonly the average age for a "mature" house where most of the cities the homes are in weren't established until the mid-to-late 1800's. Especially for the suburbs, which are about the age of these homes.
I grew up in a home built in 1954. It didn't survive a World War, but it's had its fair share of powerful tornadoes, blizzards, and the like and has been relatively unscathed since its inception (minus a new sewer line). With timber framing!
+1 in my 100yo house, I’m suspicious of hastily made new developments and prefer a house built when homes were made to last. Of course I live somewhere that gets neither too cold or too hot so...