World's End by Richard Jefferies

The owner of three parts of Stirmingham -- now a monstrous overgrown city, just building a cathedral -- actually had nothing but a little bread and cheese for supper. There were people who condoled with him, and offered to lend him sums of money -- not large, but very useful to a starving man, one would have thought. He shrugged his shoulders and said, "Thank you; I'll wait."

Certain keen speculators tried to come round him in twenty different ways. They represented that all this mass of bricks and mortar -- this unfinished Belgravia -- really was not worth owning; no one could ever find the coin to finish the plans, and house property had depreciated ninety percent.