But it’s a different story for new-build owners, according to the Home Builders Federation, which represents more than 300 small and medium-sized private sector homebuilders in England and Wales.

The HBF claims that the average new-build buyer saves £52 a month on energy bills thanks to the energy-efficiency of their homes.

That’s £629 a year – the cost of a mobile phone contract and home broadband or the average Premier League football season ticket.

This energy-efficiency is down to new technology and building materials, they claim, such as systems allowing residents to control their heating via a smart phone.

Owners of older homes can use the same phone apps but may have to replace their old radiators first or fit them with valves that connect to smart phones.

New-build homes won’t have that problem and more than 80 per cent of those built in the past decade are rated A-B for energy-efficiency compared to just two per cent of old homes.

This is increasingly important because when it comes to selling a home the vendors have to provide an Energy Performance Certificate rating, which advises how energy-efficient the property is: A is very efficient and G is inefficient.

According to the HBF report: “In order for a secondhand home to become more energy-efficient a number of measures need to be taken to modernise aspects like heating and insulation. Retrofitting such components can be very time-consuming and disruptive and, in some cases, can be unfeasible because of structural constraints.

“Due to being built with up-to-date technology and materials, a well-designed new-build home embeds energy-efficiency from the very beginning without the need for an expensive total overhaul upgrade or constant fixing of small issues as they arise.”

So if you are in the market for a new-build home, what should you be looking for in terms of energy-efficiency?

Insulation within outside walls is the main difference between new and old homes. Most post-1920s homes will have two “skins” of masonry with a cavity between them that prevents damp from getting into the inner skin. But many older homes have no insulation within the cavity and most pre-1920s homes have no cavity at all.

New homes, though, have insulation that is six times more efficient than the insulation used during the 1960s.

Older houses may have had double glazing fitted but the best new-builds will have double glazing filled with argon gas, which lets the sun in but reduces heat loss.

This makes it twice as efficient as mid-1990s double glazing. And new external doors are tightly fitted and sealed to prevent draughts and heat loss – although replacing front and back doors is something that can easily be achieved in older homes using specialist companies.

New homes also have high levels of roof insulation and condensing boilers are standard. These capture heat and energy that older boilers simply eject as exhaust gases but both boilers and roof insulation are easily installed in older homes and we can all replace our lightbulbs with energy-efficient LEDs and upgrade to A* or A-rated fridges and dishwashers to cut energy bills.

One of the most interesting new-build projects is the Climate Innovation District in Leeds, the UK’s first urban low carbon neighbourhood.

It is being built by Citu, which produces factory-built timber-framed housing that is up to 10 times more energy-efficient than a standard modern UK home.

There will be 121 houses and 191 flats on the site beside the River Aire and the first phase includes four-bedroom homes for sale from £330,000 to £390,000 (0113 320 2357; citu.co.uk).

Every Citu Home will have a specialist mechanical ventilation with heat recovery system to reduce heat loss and improve energy-efficiency plus Smart-Home digital technology that will give residents full control of their energy consumption using a smart phone, tablet or any other computer.

Solar panels will generate electricity for an onsite grid to provide energy for the development and homes will feature green roofs to reduce overheating in summer.

Citu Home was developed in partnership with Leeds Beckett University and the one, two, three and four-bedroom home designs are based around a Scandinavian model of medium density urban housing.

Chris Thompson, founder and managing director of Citu, says: “The self-build market has been able to design energy-efficient homes for a while now but no one is doing it on a mass-scale and, without a big change, the UK is not going to meet its ambitious targets for either new housing or reducing carbon emissions.

"We want to disrupt the construction industry, which has fallen behind other sectors in terms of innovation and productivity.

“With our approach, every new-build housing development could be designed and manufactured in a way that accelerates the transition to low carbon cities.

"To put it in perspective, if the Government’s target of 300,000 new homes built every year by 2050 were manufactured using our Citu Home design, we could reduce carbon emissions by more than 550 million tonnes compared to conventional methods of construction.”