Older buildings harder to maintain

News Category: Industry News

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Landlords looking to add another property to their portfolio should take note that older buildings are generally more expensive to run than new-builds.

That is according to the Home Builders Federation (HBF), which has asserted that when houses or flats were built many years ago energy-efficiency was not really taken into consideration and now due to their age they "would need more maintenance".

John Slaughter, of the HBF, noted that this is because they would have been constructed before national building regulations were in place.

"An older building would need more maintenance and certainly they're generally much less energy efficient than new builds", he said.

"Data that has been collected in recent years would suggest that if you compared a house built today with one built a hundred years ago it might be four to six times more energy efficient overall.

"So there are factors like that which will mean that a newly built home will be less expensive to run than an older property."

The HBF is a trade association which represents the interests of homebuilders in England and Wales.

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