MySQL Performance - LEFT JOIN / HAVING vs Sub Query - mysql

Question

Which of the following queries style is better for performance?
Basically, I'm returning many related records into one row with GROUP_CONCAT and I need to filter by another join on the GROUP_CONCAT value, and I will need to add many more either joins/group_concats/havings or sub queries in order to filter by more related values. I saw that, officially, LEFT JOIN was faster, but I wonder if the GROUP_CONCAT and HAVING through that off.
(This is a very simplified example, the actual data has many more attributes and it's reading from a Drupal MySQL architecture)
Thanks!
Main Records
+----+-----------------+----------------+-----------+-----------+
| id | other_record_id | value | type | attribute |
+----+-----------------+----------------+-----------+-----------+
| 1 | 0 | Red Building | building | |
| 2 | 1 | ACME Plumbing | attribute | company |
| 3 | 1 | east_side | attribute | location |
| 4 | 0 | Green Building | building | |
| 5 | 4 | AJAX Heating | attribute | company |
| 6 | 4 | west_side | attribute | location |
| 7 | 0 | Blue Building | building | |
| 8 | 7 | ZZZ Mattresses | attribute | company |
| 9 | 7 | south_side | attribute | location |
+----+-----------------+----------------+-----------+-----------+
location_transaltions
+-------------+------------+
| location_id | value |
+-------------+------------+
| 1 | east_side |
| 2 | west_side |
| 3 | south_side |
+-------------+------------+
locations
+----+--------------------+
| id | name |
+----+--------------------+
| 1 | Arts District |
| 2 | Warehouse District |
| 3 | Suburb |
+----+--------------------+
Query #1
SELECT
a.id,
GROUP_CONCAT(
IF(b.attribute = 'company', b.value, NULL)
) AS company_value,
GROUP_CONCAT(
IF(b.attribute = 'location', b.value, NULL)
) AS location_value,
GROUP_CONCAT(
IF(b.attribute = 'location', lt.location_id, NULL)
) AS location_id
FROM
records a
LEFT JOIN records b ON b.other_record_id = a.id AND b.type = 'attribute'
LEFT JOIN location_translations lt ON lt.value = b.value
WHERE a.type = 'building'
GROUP BY a.id
HAVING location_id = 2
Query #2
SELECT temp.* FROM (
SELECT
a.id,
GROUP_CONCAT(
IF(b.attribute = 'company', b.value, NULL)
) AS company_value,
GROUP_CONCAT(
IF(b.attribute = 'location', b.value, NULL)
) AS location_value
FROM
records a
LEFT JOIN records b ON b.other_record_id = a.id AND b.type = 'attribute'
WHERE a.type = 'building'
GROUP BY a.id
) as temp
LEFT JOIN location_translations lt ON lt.value = temp.location_value
WHERE location_id = 2

Answer 1

Using JOIN is preferable in most cases, because it helps optimizer to understand which indexes he can to use. In your case, query #1 looks good enough.
Of course, it works only if tables has indexes. Check table records has indexes on id, other_record_id, value and type columns, table location_translations on value