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

Wooden houses need good maintenance, with regular repairs and renovations to keep in good condition (like new bathroom floor tiles every 20-30 years as that's when waterproofing tends to fail, new insulation as the old settles down, new gutters, new roof eventually, and regular painting of the outside walls) but they can last a long time. There's a wooden house across the road from my grandad's house that was built in 1781 (its the village museum now), the locals repaired and renovated it in the 70s.

And yet there are prefabs, built to last 10 years that are still around today. OK they have had a lot of work done and the ones near me are currently being replaced before they become a danger.

@floppybit there are still plenty of shorties around. I'm 5ft 0. There are medical conditions that limit size. There are many ethnicities where people are generally shorter.

We will be living in those houses for many years.

Our house is 1400s and hadn't had anything done to it for 100 years approx. DH took it down and rebuilt it as it was, minus some of the internal walls. With constant upkeep it will last forever.

Every era has good and bad building quality. There weren't enough actual builders for all the building work done in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. There were a lot of very badly built houses.

Houses survive for as long as they can be maintained and adapted to modern living.

The slums cleared in the post-war era tended to have been rapidly constructed to accomodate rapidly urbanising populations with no building controls, poorly maintained, and difficult to update with modern expectations of indoor bathrooms and kitchens. It was simpler to clear swathes of them and start again than to renovate what was often in very poor condition both from maintainence and construction issues. Good buildings will have been lost too due to the scale of the projects.

The post-war tower blocks have often had short lives because of poor construction (Roman Point) including specifications, materials and building method. Add in the social problems of breaking and relocating communities, often being away from employment and sevices in the out-of-town estates built to accommodate the slum clearances, and the logistics of establishing communities in high rise environments.

A lot comes down to how sturdy the building is, and how adaptable it is to modernisation.

I grew up in a solid, brick built house 250+years old. It had a phase of dereliction, but was saved by its architectural value and the size of the rooms made it adaptable to changing the internal layout to modern expectations. The fittings that wear over time are replacable.

Regular maintenance is essential. I grew up in a 1930s semi, there are lots in my town and they always look very solid and well built. The house we have now was built in 1990 and pretty solid but a bit small.
The most recent houses being thrown up around here look like a puff of wind would blow them down !!

Our whole area of London is being turned into blocks of flats. I’ve been told I am old fashioned for wanting streets of houses. Our house is nearly 100 years old and still going strong .

I grew up in a farmhouse that was built in the 1600s.

What happens when houses get to a certain age is they are a little like "Tiggers Broom" you are on a constant cycle of changing and replacing stuff. In the years my parents have lived there both chimneys were replaced, it has been rewired and replastered, all the windows were replaced, it was underpinned, a corridor was added upstairs to avoid having to walk through rooms to get to other rooms, the ceilings in two rooms were taken down and replaced, the kitchen floor was taken up and redug.

Obviously before themy moved in in the 1970s lots of changes like installing mains water, electricty, central heating etc... had happened (apparently at some point it was divided in to two cottages)

Old buildings also become a little more "organic" as they age - floors slope, doors expand and contract with the seasons, cracks in walls open and close, walls bow a little. You learn to live with the building.

I wouldn't think twice about investing in a victorian home. I live in one now and it's solid.

But I think this all the time about new build houses. Their poor quality build (generally) and sometimes dating design, how long really is their lifespan? Will we still see these new build communities in 150 years?

It depends on the government and councils , they can declare homes not fit for purpose and modern standards and compulsery purchase them for a fraction of their worth .

I wonder this about new build estates. They always seem a bit flimsy to me and I just don't see them being here in 200 years or whatever. What will happen to great swathes of the country when they start to degrade. (Sorry to anyone that lives in a new build. I've nothing against them, I just can't see them all staying sound for really long periods of time)

Um regular maintenance.

I have a 1980s tiny house. I've been here 20yeads. What maintenancd should I have done/be doing??

I think there is a lot of romanticism around older houses. They weren't all well built. The amount of late victorian and edwardian terraces wanted as a result of urbanisation and industrialisation meant they weren't built by skilled trades.

The edwardian terraced houses in my area were closely associated with factories. 2 up, 2 down. The only internal plumbing would be a tap in the kitchen. Outside toilet. No damp proof. Single skin.

For sure we still have them but that is because they prop each other up. They haven't been gentrified, not that sort of area. The modernisation has been limited.

I grew up in a 1920s house in Welwyn Garden City. Prime clay belt. My parents' house had to be underpinned. One of the problems with many of the houses is that the little side streets were designed with the thought that we would all be flying everywhere so very limited for cars.

My house was built in 2006. Modern building standards made it easy to extend and remodel as our needs changed.