Super Prime

Our cities are failing. While the super-rich sit on properties worth a fortune, the rest of us struggle to afford to live. We’re told it’s too much immigration, too much red tape and too little housing. Super Prime tells the real story. Since 2008, a warped economic normal has turbocharged house prices across the West. From London to Manchester, Atlanta to Dublin, a house has become a financial asset rather than a home. Enclaves of high-end real estate, owned by overseas investors, are left empty – more dead than alive. In the wake of the subprime crisis, a new superprime crisis has taken hold.

This is the story of how luxury developments – with their familiar formula of high security, privatised public space and exclusive shops – are sterilizing our cities. Above all, it is a story of who bears the cost. Priced out, ordinary communities, families and small businesses – the lifeblood of the city – are forced to leave. Homelessness rises, wages flatline, and social housing collapses.

Through meticulous research and myth-busting storytelling, Anna Minton uncovers life on the frontlines of this global crisis, reporting from the streets of Skid Row to the skyscrapers of Billionaires Row, while making clear how housing policy works in action – and offering real solutions. Super Prime reveals how our cities can once again become places where people, not capital, come first.