[vidarh]

London's Centre Point, when it was built one of the tallest buildings in the country, and in one of the most central locations possible, stood empty for 6 years after it was finished because the owner would rather keep it empty while waiting for the market to match his price rather than drop his asking price, due to the long leases.

More recently, large parts of prime real estate rates that next to my local station, which is one of the busiest in the UK, has remained undeveloped for 20+ years because it's better for the developers to wait for the land to appreciate and slowly build out bit by bit to release capital than develop it all at once.

As long as you expect prices to keep going up, it's great leverage: You take investment only to acquire the land, and then when you sell your first take much shorter term finance to construct buildings and get returns on a multiple on the land value, while simultaneously artificially constraining the supply

[mapt]

In a democracy, you would do something like tax this real estate, heavily, for the benefit of the people living in this locale. Hand it back out to these locals ("biological human voters") as free services, goods, or cash as you prefer.

In inhabited buildings, that gets passed on to the residents. In uninhabited buildings, it comes straight out of the investors ("land-hoarders").