Newly married and with his first child on the way, auto worker Wang (王) wanted to move into the apartment he bought in Wuhan three years ago, but those hopes were dashed by China’s ballooning property crisis.
Saddled with nearly US$300,000 in debt and with his unit nowhere near completion, the 34-year-old decided he had enough and stopped making mortgage payments.
He is among numerous home buyers across dozens of cities in China who have boycotted payments over fears that their properties will not be completed by cash-strapped, debt-laden developers.
Photo: AFP
“They said construction would resume soon,” Wang said, only giving his surname. “But no workers showed up.”
Beijing-based Wang was planning to start a family after purchasing the home.
“It wasn’t easy for us to buy this home. It all came from my savings,” Wang said. “Now there’s no home, and we still owe 2 million yuan [US$296,608] in mortgage payments.”
After years of explosive growth fueled by easy access to loans, Chinese authorities launched a crackdown on excessive debt in 2020.
That squeezed financing options for property sector giants such as Evergrande, as they struggled to make repayments and restructure mountains of debt.
Now they are facing mortgage boycotts and government pressure to deliver presold homes.
In Wuhan, the capital of Hubei Province, buyers such as Wang said they received multiple postponement notices on their apartments from developer Myhome Real Estate, months past the promised delivery date in late last year.
The builder said in a notice this week that it had managed to release some frozen funds, adding that it expects to complete the Wuhan project late this year.
Wang said he stopped repayments this month, and that complaints to authorities in the city did not make a difference.
“There’s no hope in life, carrying on with payments like this,” he said.
The “crisis of confidence” in China’s housing market points to structural flaws, Gavekal Dragonomics director of China research Andrew Batson wrote in a recent report.
Because of their heavy reliance on selling apartments in advance, developers pursued business models that exposed buyers to the risk of not getting their homes, he said.
As financially stressed firms halt construction on projects, “those risks have dramatically materialized,” he added.
The crisis has left home buyers in limbo.
“I thought it would never happen,” a Wuhan homebuyer surnamed Hu (胡) said of his unfinished home.
The 25-year-old said his family took out loans to help with the down payment for a three-room flat in 2018.
At that time, Wuhan was encouraging college graduates such as Hu to get household registrations in the city, he said.
Known as hukou (戶口), these all-important government registrations allow access to healthcare and schools.
“Everyone was buying property back then ... people were vying for it,” he said.
Another young homebuyer, Xue (薛), said that almost all of his salary now goes to rent and mortgage payments.
“I don’t want to pay any more,” the 24-year-old said. “Our hearts are cold.”
“It’s not that we disregard the law or contracts, but this situation puts us under too much pressure,” he added.
Xue’s family put down 800,000 yuan for the flat, while he took on a 600,000 yuan loan that he has been repaying for two years.
Buyers in Wuhan said there have been protests over unfinished presold homes in the city.
Home buyers in about 100 cities — involving more than 300 housing projects — have boycotted mortgage payments, according to a crowd-sourced document titled “WeNeedHome.”
Kehinde Sanni spends his days smoothing out dents and repainting scratched bumpers in a modest autobody shop in Lagos. He has never left Nigeria, yet he speaks glowingly of Burkina Faso military leader Ibrahim Traore. “Nigeria needs someone like Ibrahim Traore of Burkina Faso. He is doing well for his country,” Sanni said. His admiration is shaped by a steady stream of viral videos, memes and social media posts — many misleading or outright false — portraying Traore as a fearless reformer who defied Western powers and reclaimed his country’s dignity. The Burkinabe strongman swept into power following a coup in September 2022
‘FRAGMENTING’: British politics have for a long time been dominated by the Labor Party and the Tories, but polls suggest that Reform now poses a significant challenge Hard-right upstarts Reform UK snatched a parliamentary seat from British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labor Party yesterday in local elections that dealt a blow to the UK’s two establishment parties. Reform, led by anti-immigrant firebrand Nigel Farage, won the by-election in Runcorn and Helsby in northwest England by just six votes, as it picked up gains in other localities, including one mayoralty. The group’s strong showing continues momentum it built up at last year’s general election and appears to confirm a trend that the UK is entering an era of multi-party politics. “For the movement, for the party it’s a very, very big
A new online voting system aimed at boosting turnout among the Philippines’ millions of overseas workers ahead of Monday’s mid-term elections has been marked by confusion and fears of disenfranchisement. Thousands of overseas Filipino workers have already cast their ballots in the race dominated by a bitter feud between President Ferdinand Marcos Jr and his impeached vice president, Sara Duterte. While official turnout figures are not yet publicly available, data from the Philippine Commission on Elections (COMELEC) showed that at least 134,000 of the 1.22 million registered overseas voters have signed up for the new online system, which opened on April 13. However,
ENTERTAINMENT: Rio officials have a history of organizing massive concerts on Copacabana Beach, with Madonna’s show drawing about 1.6 million fans last year Lady Gaga on Saturday night gave a free concert in front of 2 million fans who poured onto Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro for the biggest show of her career. “Tonight, we’re making history... Thank you for making history with me,” Lady Gaga told a screaming crowd. The Mother Monster, as she is known, started the show at about 10:10pm local time with her 2011 song Bloody Mary. Cries of joy rose from the tightly packed fans who sang and danced shoulder-to-shoulder on the vast stretch of sand. Concert organizers said 2.1 million people attended the show. Lady Gaga