Chinese dream of home ownership crumbling

Residential buildings under construction last month at Tahoe Group Co.‘s Cathay Courtyard development in Shanghai. (Qilai Shen / Bloomberg/Getty Images)Last November, hundreds of angry homeowners in Nanchang, the capital of China’s Jiangxi province, gathered on the roof of an unfinished apartment building. From their perch, they unfurled red and white banners along the outer walls and chanted demands for completion of the homes they had already partially paid for. On the dirt below, workers inflated a large airbag to catch anyone who jumped.Nearly 500 miles away in Shanghai, a 26-year-old interior designer watched video of the protest on social media, and saw her life plan falling apart.The woman and her husband, who requested anonymity to avoid retribution, had purchased a three-bedroom unit in the sprawling Xinli City project presale in August 2019. Just a few hours’ drive from both their hometowns, the development was touted as a “750,000-square-meter city of ideal life,” with a day-care center for the couple’s young child. It should have been finished that November. It wasn’t until she saw the video that she learned construction had stopped three months earlier.Like the vast majority of Chinese home buyers, they had begun making payments before construction was completed. For years, this type of arrangement, which accounts for more than 80% of China’s home sales, gave developers easy access to funds and fueled rapid expansion as home prices soared.Residential buildings under construction at Tahoe Group Co.‘s Cathay Courtyard development in July in Shanghai. (Bloomberg via Getty Images)But with financing drying up and debts coming due, the resulting cash crunch has left thousands of units unfinished, and owners boycotting their mortgages in protest.D …