The maintenance of a building can sometimes present major headaches which are not considered adequately during buying.   My partner and I lived in a selection of flats for many years – until we too could aford to buy a complete house, of our own.  The flats belonged to our italian landlord and his wife who had inexplicably managed to buy up huge swathes of the old town, in a relatively short time.  Their portfolio were all old and not having funds to spare, they did all the ‘doing up’ work themselves for many years.  The wife was very good at shinning up a tall ladder, no fear of heights for her.   Once her husband was up on the roof of whichever property they were working on, she would be up and down the ladder prviding  him with supplies of roof tiles, buckets of fresh roof mortar, flashing materials, whatever.  They were a truly excellent eam of building owners, maintainers.