As a result, building these high-end homes is becoming increasingly hard to justify commercially for developers.

Fina-fucking-ly

It's been decades of this farcical construction of new residences that are actually just intended to function as overpriced speculative assets

The new builds are genuinely terrible too compared to the old council houses. Imagine a 16 floor build, with two lifts, but only 1 of them is working, and that the lift is dead centre of the building so there's no actual windows or lights other than the bare minimum.

Once you're up beyond the 5th floor, good luck to you leaving you the apartment ever again. You could not tempt me to live in anything other than an old council house compared to a new build

Prime? Living in a congested overpopulated shit-hole?