What will happen with houses as they get older?

[FreakInTheSheets]

Hi

Sorry for the weird title and I'm not sure if I'm explaining my question well below.

I live in a 1930s block of flats. We're in Scotland so it's simply owned by the owners freehold-style.

We recently had the roof replaced. It's a fundamentally sound building but presumably it will become not fit for purpose at some point in the future? Will the 6 owners just get together and decide to knock it down and build a (taller?!!) block of flats?

Like in say 100 years? More? Less?

Thanks

I hate it break it to you but you won’t be around to worry about it in a hundred years…

Yes at some point. But 30s blocks tend to be pretty solid, so I think it will outlast you.

I have wondered this too OP. Scaffolding and they’d repoint etc? No idea!

I used to wonder this about australian/American houses that are made of wood whether they end up being rebuilt.

I wondered this too. Lots of post war semis, privately owned. Who says when they'll come down? Can one side object if they've renovated?

If the building is fundamentally sound why do you think it will need knocking down at some point in the future?

Lots of houses have been around for centuries. Edinburgh castle is 900 years old and still going.

I guess like PRC properties the necessary parts will just be rebuilt and replaced when needed.

I suppose it depends how well built it is / how well it is looked after.

In principle it could keep going forever, so long as it’s maintained.

Bricks can be repointed and rebar put in to strengthen.

Unless there’s something about the construction that’s vulnerable, it won’t necessarily become unfit for purpose. There are plenty of Victorian terraced houses that have had bathrooms added and central heating installed etc.

Well, my house is 1880s and still going strong. I can't see it needing to be demolished anytime soon, once it keeps being well maintained.

It depends how it was built.

Our house is wooden frame and has a wood enterior, eventually the exterior wood will need replacing, but that will be a job for the kids when we’re long gone. The lifespan for the type of house we have is about 100 years, ours is older, but before we inherited it my husbands great grandma had all of the external cladding replaced, she also had a few of the wooden structural beams replaced with RSJs which will significantly increase its lifespan.

Thanks all. Yes, I'm very much thinking of what will happen when I'm long gone. (Albeit I plan to stick around for a bit to get my money's worth out of the bloody roof!)

Yes there are lots of buildings hundreds of years old in the UK, especially beautiful or historical ones. But then there have also have been lots torn down and new things built (I'm thinking of all those hideous Glasgow skyscrapers blown up/smashed up in the 80s/90s). My flat probably falls in the middle somewhere.

I knew a bloke who was a builder. He always said: "Never buy a house built after 1945."

In his opinion the quality of building work dropped of a cliff after the war.

He should know, he made a very good living fixing all the problems in post-war houses. His own house was built in the 1880s.

So, 1930s I reckon you're OK, OP.

Ours is from 1863 and still, according to our surveyor, ‘good for a good while yet’.

Well a significant proportion of the population lives in a Victorian terrace. I have wondered the same.... what will happen in future when the Victorian terraces are all 250 years old rather than the present 125 years - will there come a point that they're not viable any more, or that they need to be reaced for energy efficiency or population overcrowding reasons?

I guess this has already happened in some urban areas when Victorian slums were torn down to be reaced by new council estates in the post war period. The houses were condemned, the occupants rehoused and the streets were flattened.

We can't really imagine what the world will look like 100 years from now and what the populations needs will be.

Some of them do. Which means they can be rebuilt to modern standards of insulation and other design considerations whereas we have this idea that buildings should last forever but they can't all be retrofitted to bring them up to spec.

this reminds me of a dream I had about a year ago when I was my future me, 100 years into the future, coming to have a look at our current house/street (built 1984) and it had been levelled and a strange new modern build replaced it. It was an odd dream.
Felt like I'd time travelled. And i don't believe in that shit.

My mum was brought up in a solid back-to-back, no bathroom, coal fires. They weren’t slums, but they were all knocked down and replaced with tower blocks which, at the time, people thought were marvellous with their indoor toilets etc.

Well, we all now know what a mistake those tower blocks turned out to be.

I don’t think we’ll see that sort of wide-scale demolition again.

I do wonder how much of the idea that we've got worse at building houses comes from survivors bias?
Up until a few years ago I lived in an 1890s tenement flat that very much seemed to be coming to the end of it's life due to unfortunate poor maintenance. It was also in scotland and I believe the ownership situation was similar to your flat (i was renting tho) and I often wandered what would happen when it was finally declared unfit to live in. Particularly to us tenants!
Somehow it still seems to be standing though so who knows.

The wide scale demolition is still on going I'm afraid.
My hometown has about 20 high rise tower blocks and quite a number of smaller blocks built around the same time scheduled to be demolished in the next few years!
On one hand a lot of them have become quite unappealing places to live but on the other it's a lot of social housing being destroyed and it doesn't seem to be being adequately replaced.

The buildings that get torn down, it's usually either the owners decide to redevelop, or there is a council/govt compulsory purchase order.

So unless the joint freeholders all get together and decide to redevelop (or sell to someone who will) the building will carry on being lived in.

My house is 1880s and apart from replacing a couple of bricks, some repointing and new slates, it's solid.

The thing I always wonder about is what will happen to all those really old houses and cottages with very low doors and ceilings when people are too tall to live in them. Humans have got taller over time. We are a very tall family and couldn't live in one of those houses, they must only be inhabited by short people. Will there come a time where people in general are too tall to live in them?

in vancouver, older homes on larger lots of land are often bought, torn down with much larger homes or multifamily homes built.
it does destroy the character of some neighborhoods but the buyers don't care they just want the location and a home to suit their needs.

My mum's house was built in 1927, it's solid & mainly original. The house I owned was built in 1965, it's a Vic Hallam timber framed house that was only built to last 30 years, they will still be there in another 30 years.

I live on a street of Victorian back to backs and terraces.

The street is built on the site of a former quarry so there is dreadful subsidence. Lots of the houses have slanty lintels and cracks.

But still they are not going anywhere. They are safe to live in as they are not going to fall down overnight so will just be propped up where needed. I don't think houses are knocked down unless there's imminent danger.