I have a pretty poor opinion of new builds after looking at quite a few developments recently.
Will give my experiences based on my estate:
Not only are the houses small
Bit of a generalisation I feel, if you spend enough money you will find a big enough house for most people's needs. Even our smallest bedroom could comfortably fit a double bed plus a single bed and furniture. The only room I would consider small really is the bathroom, but there are 2x ensuites and a downstairs loo so it rarely gets used unless we want a bath anyway.
, but the plots are tiny too. Back gardens little bigger than a postage stamp, often no front garden at all.
Agreed - townhouses seem quite common to allow more rooms per plot. Even the bigger houses on our estate (5 bed) have relatively small gardens.
You're lucky if you get a 1 car driveway and the garage is usually too small to fit a car in.
Maybe a luxury estate or 4x4, lol
My wife's car (Seat Leon) fits in the garage even with a barbecue, bedframe, matress, bags of crap etc piled up at the back, with an allocated offroad parking space in front.
The roads in these estates are as thin as possible. Add that to the lack of parking and and high density, these estates end up looking like car parks on an evening when everyone is at home.
Seems to be the case with many urban streets in the UK; our street doesn't have noticably fewer parking spaces available than lots of other places with no parking restrictions.
Plus, in some cases the build quality is poor
Yes, goes with the territory with new builds. At least you are covered in the short term though (2 years snagging, 10 years nhbc).
The very newest estates can look kind of pleasant in their stark uniform lego-land look, but in the estates built a year or two ago they look a bit scruffy.
Ours is about 5 years old (although being extended at one end over the past couple of years). I think it looks smarter than the majority of older estates aside from the odd house like mine where the owner can't be arsed to maintain the front garden properly
Depends on tastes of course - people who want 'rustic charm' need not apply, but I can't think of anywhere locally that looks nicer for the same money.
Can't see them holding their value at all once they're 10-20 years old and competing with houses on estates built in the 80's and 90's which in comparison are far more attractive with far bigger plots.
Again goes with the territory - new builds often don't hold their value once they are 2 years old never mind 20
I live in a new town that was largely developed in the 90s so it is fairly easy to compare, the older houses do tend to have bigger plots. When we moved here there was a house built around 1997 we looked at which I liked but my wife didn't, I think it would have been a better buy than what we ended up with but then it cost more money so one could argue that the fact 80s/90s estates are more attractive is reflected in the price.
The fact that there are new houses still being built on the estate will attract buyers to them rather than your own property. Thats not to say in another couple of years once the estate is finished and all sold you can and will make some profit looking at your location. 
