GUILIN – For six months, home for Ms Xu, 55, has been a room in a high-rise apartment in the southern Chinese city of Guilin that she bought three years ago, attracted by brochures touting its riverfront views and the city’s clean air.
Her living conditions, however, are far from those promised: unpainted walls, holes where electric sockets should be and no gas or running water. Every day, she climbs up and down several flights of stairs carrying heavy water bottles filled with a hose outside.
Ms Xu and about 20 other buyers living in Xiulan County Mansion share a makeshift outdoor toilet and gather during the day at a table and benches in the central courtyard area.
They are part of a movement of home buyers around China who have moved into what they call “rotting” apartments, either out of financial necessity or to pressure developers and the authorities to complete these, as numerous cash-strapped builders halt construction amid the country’s deep real estate slump.
Shanghai E-House Real Estate Research Institute estimated in July that stalled projects accounted for 3.85 per cent of China’s housing market in the first half of 2022, equivalent to an area of 231 million sq m.
While some local governments have taken steps to prop up the property market by setting up bailout funds, buyers like Ms Xu, who paid deposits in advance and are on the hook for mortgages, remain in limbo.
Mortgage strikes
The proliferation of unfinished apartments has sparked unprecedented collective disobedience, fuelled by social media. In late June, thousands of home buyers in at least 100 cities threatened to halt mortgage payments to protest stalled construction.
The overall property market is highly sensitive to cases of unfinished apartments because 90 per cent of new houses bought in China are purchased “off plans” while still under construction, said Mr Yan Yuejin, research director at Shanghai E-House.
“If this issue is not resolved, it will affect property transactions and the government’s credibility, and it could exacerbate the developers’ debt problems,” he said.
China’s deep property slump, along with disruptions caused by strict anti-Covid-19 measures, is dragging on the world’s second-largest economy just as the ruling Communist Party gears up for its once-in-five-years Congress next month.
‘Crashing from paradise’
source https://netdace.com/latest-news/in-china-home-buyers-occupy-their-rotting-unfinished-properties/