BUILD HOUSES FOR THEIR SECOND OWNER

Here's a thought: what if we built houses on the assumption that someone would want to live in them after the first person had finished admiring the kitchen?

Property developers have to sell houses. Estate agents have to photograph them. There is consequently a powerful interest in whatever looks expensive at 11.30 on a sunny Saturday when the show home smells faintly of coffee and nobody has yet put a bin outside. Less prominent is the question of what the building will be like after thirty winters, four families and an energetic child with a screwdriver.

For the second owner, the selling points are different. Does the house stay warm without a financial intervention from the Treasury? Can a tradesperson reach the pipes without dismantling a cathedral of plasterboard? Can the rooms adapt as people's bodies, families and working patterns change? Is there shade when the heat arrives, a place to collect water when it doesn't, and some thought given to the direction of the sun?

I would like to see the phrase second-owner test enter the building trade. Stand outside a proposed new house and imagine it in 2075. The fashionable cladding is tired, the original kitchen has long gone and the first owner is either somewhere warmer or has been incorporated into the garden. Would this still be a house you wanted? Can it be maintained without specialists flown in from a secret factory in Belgium? Can an ordinary person afford to run it?

Start with the boring bits: insulation, ventilation, durable materials and proper drainage. Orientate the building intelligently. Leave scope for solar, batteries and future technologies without forcing tomorrow's occupier to start again. Plant trees where they make sense. Provide storage. Design at least one room that can serve different purposes through a lifetime. Make the sockets and switches reachable by an adult whose joints no longer behave like a gymnast's.

None of these ideas is going to set Instagram alight. Good. The people who live in the house in fifty years probably won't care what got likes in 2026. They'll be pleased if the roof doesn't leak.