All the good domain names have gone - probably 5 years ago ...at least. And despite efforts to introduce new top level domains, everyone knows that the place to be is .com. This is very analogous to property development: location, location, location. No amount of contrived/reclaimed land beats a mews in Mayfair or apartment on 5th Avenue.
But many (maybe even "most") of these names are being "warehoused" by speculators, not assigned to "real" web projects. The point to "for sale" pages or advertising "click farms" where the domain name is sufficiently descriptive that it
There is a major industry in "domaining" where domain speculators trade names - and the process of changing the registered ownership of a domain is remarkably flimsy in the global domains where everything is pretty much contained in the "whois" registry record. The Country code domains, notably .uk, have a more detailed process of identifying domain ownership which makes the transfer of registered owner ("registrant" ) a lot more complex than simply adjusting the whois record details.