Tianjin house buyers have been waiting for 8 years | Wilnesh News

BEIJING — In the Chinese city of Tianjin near Beijing, about 1,500 homebuyers have yet to see — let alone move into — the apartments they say they bought about eight years ago.

As is common in China, apartment complexes in Tianjin are selling off apartments before they are completed. Five homebuyers who spoke to CNBC by phone but spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation said they were promised completion by 2019 but most are still not finished. Buyers either pay in full upfront or pay in small installments. Their concerns are just one example of broader challenges that persist in parts of China’s real estate industry.

Some buyers said police came to their homes, sometimes in the middle of the night, after early efforts to recover funds or gather information about the properties they were buying.

One buyer said in Mandarin: “I feel like I’ve been cheated.” (Translated by CNBC)

“My only request is that I return the house and get my money back,” the buyer said. “Even if I could buy a house, I would feel terrible.”

Some buyers said they were buying the apartments so their parents could retire or their children could go to school nearby. After eight years of waiting to move in, one buyer said one of their parents died while waiting for a new home, while another said their children had grown up and found another school. .

The developer in the case, Troda Yidu, asked home buyers late last month to approve a dispute resolution plan, a copy of which was seen by CNBC.

The apartments could be completed in 2025 or 2026 if buyers agree to pay any outstanding balance on their property purchase and other fees determined by the developer in the coming weeks, the document said.

The proposal offers no alternatives and says the properties would have to be valued at what they were before the market crashed, or about double or more than current levels based on comparison to listing broker prices. Not to mention eight years of wear and tear, and the possible disruption to family life plans.

“My father gave me the down payment,” one buyer said of a home he purchased in 2016. “I couldn’t tell him that the house wasn’t finished. During COVID-19, I told him there were some delays. Now that COVID-19 is over, the house isn’t finished.”

In addition to paying for that apartment in full, the buyer also has to pay about $2,800 a month in mortgage payments for a second apartment in the same complex, which is for a relative.

One source said the situation is fueling a feeling that buyers will never be able to buy a home, no matter how much they spend. The person pointed out that in a group chat of about 500 buyers on social media, about 90% rejected the developer’s proposal.

Despite repeated attempts by CNBC to call and email the company and its representatives, Zodiac could not be reached for comment. The lawyer handling the bankruptcy and liquidation case of Zhuoda Yidu referred CNBC to the Tianjin Wuqing District People’s Court for comments. The court did not respond to CNBC’s request.

Wang said this was the first time she had heard of homebuyers having to pay more to get ready-made apartments.

She said before the Covid-19 pandemic, there were sporadic delays in deliveries, particularly in cities such as Tianjin, where property development surged in 2014 and 2015. Find a solution quickly because for an average family this involves a lot of money.

Interest in Tianjin and other surrounding areas Beijing home prices soared before the outbreak as people working in the Chinese capital looked for more affordable housing options as prices neared their peak.

China’s top leadership said at a meeting in late April that they would continue their efforts Ensure the delivery of houses and protect the interests of house buyers.

China’s Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development and its local department in Tianjin’s Wuqing District had no comment when CNBC contacted them for this story.

Zhuoda Developers is far from one of the largest developers in China. Some homebuyers interviewed by CNBC said that after making a down payment, they discovered that the property in question was not necessarily a certified project.

The official Tianjin Daily reported in March 2017 that Zhuoda Yidu’s Xiyu Garden project in Tianjin’s Wuqing District was an early sign of problems with the project. Violating the city’s real estate transaction rules Collecting payments from home buyers without obtaining a commercial housing sales license. According to reports, relevant local departments have imposed penalties and ordered rectification. Records reviewed through the commercial database Qicha show that Zhuoda Yidu did not obtain a commercial housing sales license until August 2018, although it had already obtained construction permits for some projects as early as 2016.

A home buyer confirmed to CNBC that after the incident described in the Tianjin Daily report, the home buyer received a purchase certificate.

Buyers of Tianjin apartments interviewed for this article said they were aware that efforts to have the project listed on the central government’s list of unfinished dwellings, which would typically guarantee financing until completion, had failed, although it was unclear whether that was because of the project. Certification status. Some see the latest proposed dispute resolution as a response to changes in central policy, as it is a path to completing construction rather than leaving the project pending.

Problems in the real estate industry have also put pressure on local government finances, which once generated significant revenue from selling land to developers.

Among China’s high-income cities, Tianjin One of the countries with the highest debt levels relative to GDPaccording to S&P Global Ratings.

For many families, real estate makes up the bulk of their wealth, often the result of concentrated savings from grandparents and relatives.

A house buyer spent 190,000 yuan and 700,000 yuan to buy a 90-square-meter two-bedroom apartment in an unfinished apartment building in Tianjin.

This is equivalent to several years of savings. Per capita disposable income of Beijing residents in 2023 88,650 yuanand 51,271 yuan The cost of living in Tianjin is much lower.

“We don’t have that much money,” the buyer told CNBC. “If we had enough money, we would buy things in Beijing.”