Wondering what your thoughts were on this subject. Houses need to be maintained whether old or new but are there things unique to each one in your experience?
I would imagine there is a lot more to consider with an older property regarding maintenance and artisans ….keeping warm/cool etc
We have an old stone farmhouse, over 300 years old. The walls are 50cm thick,
In summer it’s great because it stays cool - so no need for air conditioning.
In winter during the day we keep to three rooms - kitchen and two studies - and use electric and gas heaters to keep them cosy. In the evening we have our godin wood stove going in the lounge, which throws out a massive amount of heat, where we watch TV.
When we had the house restored we had insultation fitted between the beams and the kitchen walls insulated but for the rest of the house we have the original stone walling.
Rising damp can be an issue in winter as the walls are straight onto bare earth, depending on how much rain there is.
The walls can be tough to work with - eg drilling holes through - as one never knows what one is going to find under the render (large solid lump of stone or rubble).
We have cracks in the walls in places - nothing major. But we don’t worry about subsidence / movement etc because the house has been here probably 350 years and is still standing.
It, of course, had/has all the associated features - huge beams, beautiful stone work round the windows, wafer thin window glass (we now have double glazing), ancient cracked floor tiles.
The house is a paradise for spiders, cobwebs and dust from the lime render which sheds all the time! (I’m not that house proud, fortunately.)
We fancied a stone house - tuffeau is very common in the area - because the interior of tuffeau walls is very attractive and doesn’t need decorating.
Ended up in a 1960s house!
So much to do with personal taste. With modern houses I generally find the ceilings too low and the rooms too small.
A properly renovated old house should not be more of a maintenance burden than equivalent sized modern house. But modern houses are often smaller.
And the bedrooms are often as small as the builder thought he could get away with. A number of modern houses we looked at had bedroms ~11m2, little more than the 9m2 “legal minimum”.
It’s got so much to do with personal taste it’s hard to get advice from other people. If you want an easy to run cheap to heat house look at the newest possible on the market. If you want to live in a 60s/70s/80s house or an older stone house listen to the people who live in them not to those who don’t. There are a lot of myths and untruths bandied about. For me that boring phrase about location is the most important thing. I spend a lot of time outside my house all year round so the outside environment is almost as important to me as the living space.
Our house, the original bit, was built in the factory 5 kms away and put together in sections on site. The extension, made and delivered from the same place, doubled the area but was to ‘habitation’ standard as opposed to the old bit was described as ‘vacation’ standard. This means that the thickness of the walls increased from 7 cms to 12cms, but we have never had a problem with keeping warm, or cool, thanks to initially a gas heater, then a central log fire (still there for emergences), and for the last 8 years, an air to air (2 of them now) heater cum air conditioner.
We enjoyed the fact (but at the same time sympathised 
) that 4 new houses built 25 years ago nearby out of brick and block have always suffered from creeping damp on the interior walls.
But the clincher to buy was the view across the valley to the ridge in the SW. Apart fom enjoying it it is very useful as it is our weather warning, we always see the rain to come before it arrives and we are protected by forest from north and east winds. Even the trees seem to be there with an eye for safety. During rare hurricanes if they fall they always fall away from the house.
I grew up in a brick built Victorian semi and have lived the last 35 years in a stone cottage. I don’t see an old house as requiring more maintenance, possibly less if anything than a more recent house. We put in central heating, bathroom and kitchen, and have replaced nearly all the windows, but that’s normal for a 300 year old house in that condition.
As already said, generally cooler in summer and less cold in winter, we know some with very recent and well insulated houses who swelter in the summer, though their houses may be cheaper to heat. Our houses do move a little through the seasons, both the English and French ones, but we’re ok with that. In the end choose what appeals, fit it out the best you can and enjoy it.
This is really what is impacting our search for a property. We really want something with a little bit of space around it (not overlooked) with established trees, but not really something super old because who knows what might have been hidden in the 5 rehabs it has undergone.
I’ve owned a couple of new properties and three over two hundred years old; our current house was probably built sometime in the C14th and is the most solidly constructed of the lot! Like all the oldest houses in the village, it’s well sited on hard schist, higher above the Lot than later ones, some of which have been flooded several times. The orientation is good, whereas later houses upriver from us get little direct sunlight in winter. The thick stone walls and small windows keep it cool in summer and warm in winter. It’s pre-columbage, just solid stone and in very good structural condition considering its age.
IMO very old houses are usually particularly very well-sited because their builders’ choices of site were less constrained than today.
Valid piont but not always the case.
Our house is a baby compared to yours and built circa 1800. The north and south elevations have no windows so we are shielded from the cold north winds and the intense summer heat while having a view of several kilometres to the eastern sunrise and a similar view to the sunset in the west.
We owned a renter of a similar age in the Perigord noir whose garden ran down to the river. Its frontage was north facing with a cliff face to the south. A beautiful setting and very popular rental location but in the winter the combination of a cold river and cliffs that restricted sunshine to maybe 4 hours on a good day it wasn’t a warm place to live.
Fortunately all our long lets started in the summer months when all was idyllic!
Except for some that is classed as fun!
Agreed - or at least the gardening bit. 
Something seriously wrong there
Like opening the windows when hot.
Indeed, and when I was writing my post I was thinking of exceptions. Perhaps the most interesting include changing priorities of orientation combined with changing technology (such as double glazing) .
Our last house in the UK was built in 1759 on a cliff overlooking the Solway Firth and (on a clear day) had spectacular views across the Irish Sea to both the Mull of Galloway and the Isle of Man. However, most windows faced away from the view and where the weather (usually very windy and wet) came from. By contrast local mid- C20th and later houses faced the sea and had big picture windows.
Incidentally, the house appeared to have been built from bits of the once extensive Roman settlement (weathered, dressed sandstone), boulders found on the beach, including agate from the Scottish side of the Solway (a bastard when you find it with a drill) and timbers scavenged from the local shipyard - some curved door lintels had obviously had a previous life as boat ribs and many beams had notches and engraved shipwrights’ markings.
Don’t get so much history in a new-build…
As a 70 year old American, I am still getting used to the age of things in “old Europe”. Looking back on all the houses and apartments I ever lived in, the oldest was from around 1935, The next oldest was the one my parents built with their own hands (1948) that I was born into, and since then I am older than anything else I ever lived in.
A bit harsh. I like it there and visit often.
With a drill?
Actually yes. BiL has a house and a cottage down there and I’ve done a bit of DIY for him. Weather permitting I’ll catch a glimpse tomorrow as I fly back to France.