They invested their savings in houses that were never built

For Tang Chao, the Northeastern Department of China was where he and his wife would set up a business. new life together.

They paid tens of thousands of dollars for it.

But months after the projected completion date, all that was left was a concrete shell with wires protruding from the walls and mounds of dirt on the floor.

Soon their marriage also fell apart.

In another town, a man bought space for a business he thought would help his son have a better future.

A woman paid for an apartment in which she imagined her young son would grow up healthy and she could have a second child.

Andin Shanghai, A small-town technician thought he’d done his parents proud by buying a new home in the big city.

What these and hundreds of thousands of other Chinese homebuyers may not have known was that the country’s decade-long housing boom is it would suddenly stop.

Promoters ran out of money due to government crackdown excessive debt Y the slowdown of the economy.

They stopped building.

All over the country, instead of high-rise buildings, uninhabitable concrete structures are being erected on idle, overgrown construction sites.

Last year, angry shoppers from more than 100 cities he rose up in a rare act of collective rebellion and swore do not come back unfinished real estate loans.

We spoke to four people who have drained their life savings and taken out huge loans on unfinished homes.

They told us of their frustration and showed us the floors which are now bad memories of broken dreams and broken promises.

“It was a simple dream: to have a home, a family,” Tang said.

When Tang and his fiancée decided to buy a house in 2019, they were drawn to Haiyi Changzhou, one of the hottest projects in the northeastern city of Dalian.

Its promoter has promised a vast complex of skyscraper with a serene landscape and privacy, offering “a beautiful life by the sea”.

The couple bought a modest two bedroom apartment for approx $177,000.

To cover the required $74,000 down payment, they used their savings and convinced their parents to participate.

Tang, who works in a restaurant, has sold a small house he had in the countryside.

They signed a contract for the apartment in 2019 and subsequently obtained a marriage license.

The plan was to get married once the house was finished and move in together.

“At the time, we told our friends around us that we had bought a house here; we were very proud of it,” Tang said, speaking on the condition that he be identified by his nickname, Chao, due to the political sensitivity of the matter. .

“I’m from the countryside, it was nice to be able to buy an apartment somewhere.”

The department was supposed to be finished last August, but Sunac China Holdings, project promoter, was mired in financial problems.

In September, the owners of more than 2,600 unfinished units in Changzhou’s Haiyi residential complex threatened to stop paying their mortgages.

Tang said his wife got tired of waiting for a home that may never be finished and a new life that may never begin.

In November, they filed for divorce.

He’s still paying $550 a month on his mortgage.

“When I think of the unfinished floor, it’s like it fell from heaven to hell,” says Tang.

“I have nothing to look forward to in life: no apartment, no women.”

In the eastern city of Nanchang, a road divides “Xinli City”, a residential complex with more than 4,000 apartments, into two sections.

On one side are fully occupied residential towers surrounded by trees. On the other side, row after row of unfinished concrete structures, with no paint, no windows… and no signs of progress.

Andie Cao, a twentysomething sales rep, has an apartment on the wrong side.

Every time you look at the finished buildings, you see the life you were once promised.

Cao bought the three-bedroom apartment in 2019 for $203,000.

The price was high, but she and her husband had just had a baby and were planning another one.

They liked that the developer’s plan for the large apartment complex included a kindergarten and primary school.

His apartment was due to be finished in November 2021,

just in time for her son to start kindergarten.

But the developer, Sinic Holdings Group, halted work in August 2021 due to Financial problems and hasn’t finished building the apartments yet.

Cao had already handed over $80,000 for the apartment, money he had saved by working in Shanghai.

In July 2022, he joined other homebuyers from across the country in a mortgage strike for unfinished houses.

“I won’t pay until they comply, and I’m willing to pay a fine by then, but they will not exploit us nor will they bleed us to death.”

The homebuyers’ campaign has attracted the attention of the authorities.

The police call her from time to time, warning her not to take drastic measures.

Some homebuyers who protested were arrested.

“What have we done wrong to deserve to be treated like this?” he said.

“I don’t understand”.

Cao and her husband continue to work and pay the rent in Shanghai.

He doesn’t think the apartment is finished and can’t imagine trying to buy another house or have a second child.

“I feel that the hard work of the past few years has been for naught.”

Daisy Xu, a 28-year-old lab technician, remembers the day she bought her apartment in Shanghai like it was yesterday.

He had been waiting anxiously with hundreds of other prospective buyers in a hotel ballroom during a sales event for Royals Garden, a new promotion.

When his turn finally came, they gave it to him less than a minute to choose the department.

He looked at a wall where strips of paper were tacked up with the numbers of unsold apartments.

I knew I didn’t want the penthouse or anything below the fourth floor.

He chose an eighth-floor apartment and told a salesman.

He ripped the strip off the wall and handed it over.

“Congratulations, new owner!” an announcer announced.

Xu was excited.

The floors sold out that day, dashing the hopes of many others who had lined up behind her.

“I was so excited and happy that I immediately took a picture of the unit number and told people at home,” Xu says.

The apartment cost around $495,000, a high but affordable price compared to older houses in Shanghai.

She wanted a place with two bathrooms so her parents or in-laws would have more privacy if they came to visit.

The house overlooked a river and was steps away from a bustling street full of restaurants.

Xu was supposed to receive the keys in September and move out at the beginning of the year.

But the complex is far from finished.

The unpainted 16-story building is draped in a green net and surrounded by scrub and rubble.

It pains him to see the place on his way to work from an apartment he rents nearby.

About 90% of new homes are sold in China first be built.

This presale model allows developers to raise money quickly, but shifts much of the risk onto buyers like Xu.

They are expected to pay for everything before construction begins, often mortgage

Regulations require money from pre-sales to be used only for the construction of that project.

But until recently, oversight was lax and promoters used the funds for whatever they wanted, even for start other projects.

As house prices skyrocketed, the government tightened funding rules for developers in hopes of averting a collapse in the housing sector.

Many large developers – such as China Fortune Land Development of the Royals Garden project in Shanghai – sank under the weight of huge debts and had to halt construction.

Despite the delay, Xu still pays more than $1,300 a month in the mortgage.

He says he was hiding the problem from his parents.

She comes from a small town in southern China and owning a property in Shanghai was the ultimate proof that she had made it.

“I evade your questions about the apartment, but how much longer can I do that?”

Xu Feng remembered 2019 as a good year.

The grocery store in the eastern city of Nanchang that he rented and ran with his wife was doing well.

He thought it was time to get his own own shop.

You have found the perfect place:

a room of 93 square meters and 163,000 dollars on the first floor of a residential tower.

It was part of Xinli Town, the same gigantic complex of thousands of apartments where Cao, the service man, had also bought a unit.

Xu had to sell some assets at a loss to make a down payment of around $81,000 and take out a 10-year mortgage.

She enrolled her son in an elementary school in Nanchang.

Three years later, Xinli City is still unfinished.

Xu said he was under immense financial stress, paying the rent on his current business in addition to the mortgage.

She stopped going out to eat with friends and cut back on expenses, except for her son’s tuition.

“I never thought this would happen to me,” she said.

“I’m afraid of having another child. Income and expenses are just enough.”

Frustrated by the delay, Xu and hundreds of homebuyers have protested several times over the past year.

They rallied in front of local government, in public squares and even hung banners on top of a building.

But so far nothing has worked and many people have arrested at the protests, he said.

In August, Xu defaulted on his mortgage.

This affected his creditworthiness and forced him to take out loans from his family to keep his business afloat.

But he says he no longer holds out hope that the government will step in and help people like him.

“We have suffered too much as we tried to fight for our rights,” he said.

“Government officials only care about others and do no good for ordinary people.”

The New York Times reached out to Sunac China, China Fortune Land Development, Sinic Holdings Group, as well as municipal, provincial and national housing regulators for comment.

Nobody answered.

c.2023 The New York Times Society