Similarly, why would an owners corporation have inefficient lighting when it would have cost only slightly more to put in more efficient lights that would have paid for themselves in a short time?
A. The developer put in cheap 50W halogens everywhere because they look good for selling and are cheap. The OC and not the developer will have to pay the direct lighting electricity bill, the air-conditioning bill to pump out all the waste heat, and eventually it will pay the bill to retrofit efficient lighting at greater expense than if it had gone in at the start.
Ditto for minimum standard insulation, not having solar hot water as standard and so on.
Still, it is not all the developer’s fault. I spoke to one developer trying to make the high environmental standards of his development its selling point. A consequence of good design was that it would not need powered cooling but the units would not sell till he put air-con in.