No one wants to buy an unfinished building.
But such "accidents" have happened frequently to many ordinary people in the past year. Faced with the fact that they unfortunately bought an unfinished building, some people waited, some people evaded, some people stopped their loans, and some people sued...... People are trying to use their own small actions to promote the resumption of real estate construction. However, for unfinished buildings, people have to face a more far-reaching proposition - how to rebuild the order and confidence of life?
Since July 2022, many properties have been unfinished for more than a year. Although at the policy level, all localities are making every effort to ensure the delivery of buildings, but the speed of resumption of real estate work varies due to personnel and financial conditions, and ultimately has a far-reaching impact on people's lives. We interviewed a number of owners and practitioners of unfinished buildings in Wuhan, Zhengzhou, Chongqing and other places, and the following are their stories in the year after they bought them.
Text | Xie Ziyi
Edit | Yi Fangxing
Operations | Circle
"I feel like I'm going crazy"
In August this year, in Wuhan's East Lake High-tech Zone, the unfinished building bought by 28-year-old Hu Chunxue was finally completed. This was told to her by the neighbor himself. For more than a year, in order to "be out of sight and out of mind", she withdrew from the owner group and blocked any news about the real estate.
"It's finally over. She was calmer than she had imagined, and seemed to be comforted. But then the thought came to me that I had to continue to pay the mortgage again.
Back in time to more than a year ago, the news of the end of the house hit her like bad luck and destroyed the life she was looking forward to.
In May 2021, someone in the owner group said that the developer's regulatory funds had been misappropriated, and the construction team was not paid for wages and supplies of materials. Only then did everyone realize that their house had been out of work for six months. Hu Chunxue ran to the construction site and saw that the steel bars were almost rusty. She bought her house on the 27th floor, but the building was only built on the third or fourth floor, and "I felt like I was going crazy at that time."
The house originally fulfilled her wishes. When she just graduated from college, she secretly hoped to become the first girl in her class to settle down in Wuhan and buy a house. Riding an upward wind, she got a job as an interior designer with a salary of more than 10,000 yuan.
In June 2020, her wish came true, and she and her family bought a 2.1 million house located in "Greenland Optics Valley Xinghe Painting". The house is located in Wuhan East Lake High-tech Zone, known as "Wuhan's highest education real estate", more than 2,428 owners, more than 60% of them have a bachelor's degree or above, they stay because of the government's talent attraction policy.
The down payment was more than 700,000 yuan, and her parents took out 400,000 yuan of their life savings, plus 300,000 yuan she saved from work, and tens of thousands of yuan borrowed from friends, which was barely enough. She thought that there was a 90% chance that she would get married in the future, and she might not need a house at that time. In the future, she can leave this house to her younger brother and parents. In this way, her brother's marriage room is available, and the old man can not be lonely after retirement, which makes her feel at ease.
But the unfinished house involved all the family's assets. Hu Chunxue was afraid that her parents would know, and she didn't want to talk to anyone about it. The owners have called again and again, and at the end of 2021, there was a brief resumption of work. But in 2022, almost the whole year, progress has stalled again.
▲ The real estate purchased by Hu Chunxue is under construction in Wuhan Greenland Optics Valley Galaxy Painting. Photo / Courtesy of the interviewee
's mother swiped the news on Douyin, but persuaded her: "Forget it, leave it there for now." At that time, her boyfriend also sent a link to ask her to confirm whether her real estate was unfinished, she thought, "Why did he deliberately reveal the scar, what did he want to explain?" She was a little angry, and patiently replied: Thank you, I know.
Dramatically, just two months later, her boyfriend's house in Daguan in Wuhan Sunac Park was also unfinished. "In the same mindset as me, he didn't want to talk about the house anymore. ”
In 2022, there are not a few owners with similar situations. Many developers have fallen into a debt crisis, and there are unfinished buildings in many places across the country. According to the "2022 National Unfinished Buildings Research Report" of the E-House Research Institute, as of July 16, 2022, the unfinished real estate rate in the country was about 3.85%, and the unfinished area was 231 million square meters.
The cities affected by unfinished buildings also have their own characteristics. According to the statistics of China Real Estate and Residential Information Service Platform (CRIC), Zhengzhou, Changsha, Kunming, Fuzhou, Chongqing and other cities are among the best in unfinished real estate and are known as the "Five King Kongs". Taking Zhengzhou as an example, at the end of 2021, there were 106 problematic properties in Zhengzhou, involving more than 600,000 residents. This means that 8 out of every 100 people buy a problematic home.
And when it comes to unfinished business, Evergrande must not be avoided. In July 2021, the news of Evergrande's thunderstorm hit Li Wenyu like an explosion. He bought a house in Evergrande Science and Technology Tourism City, the year he bought the house, he had just graduated, he and his lover got married, 87 square meters of hardcover house carries their expectations for the future.
Soon after the marriage, the wife became pregnant. They had hoped that they would be able to move into their new home with their newborn child, and according to the plan, there will be a supporting kindergarten and primary school in the community...... However, the construction money owed by the developer has not been settled, taking the No. 7 land bought by Li Wenyu as an example, he saw that more than 20 workers were scattered and carried out a "performative resumption of work", and the paint was painted for more than half a year, but the two buildings were not finished.
Hubei native Zhou Shiting and his family also had a huge disappointment, and they spent 4 million yuan to buy a commercial house in Wuhan Renfu International Health City. In April 2022, the construction party issued a notice of suspension of work, saying that the developer was involved in arrears of 350 million yuan in project payment. Later, the owners learned that the bank's fund custody account had been revoked and there was no money in it.
In contrast, when he heard the unfinished news, the 35-year-old Ren Qianli was more optimistic, because the house was almost built, "just like the decoration, so there should be no problem". At the beginning, he bought a hardcover house in Zhengzhou Evergrande Health Valley, but in July 2021, after the heavy rain in Zhengzhou, the house was suspended.
During that time, the demolition and resettlement house in his hometown also stopped, so he was almost "homeless". He can only rent a house and work part-time, while silently looking forward to returning to work.
▲ The real estate purchased by Ren Qianli, the sand table model of Evergrande Health Valley. Photo / Courtesy of the interviewee
antagonism
Many people feel that unfinished is an end to real estate. Later, they learned that the bad ending was just the beginning.
In addition to bearing the cost of renting, Hu Chunxue is also burdened with a monthly mortgage of 8,764 yuan and the responsibility of subsidizing the family. Blocking unfinished news, she is "out of sight and out of mind", and she is focused on work.
In October last year, on a business trip to Xiantao, Hubei Province, Hu Chunxue looked out at the undulating mountains through a bumpy window, which was a rare moment for her to relax. For the next three months, she soaked in the project every day, finished her work during the day, and returned to Wuhan at night. It takes an hour and a half to go back and forth, and often it is eleven or twelve o'clock at night before I can go back to rest.
To a certain extent, working hard is also a rebellion against being dragged down by an unfinished building. With high-intensity overtime, she can get a salary of more than 20,000 yuan, which can also reduce the pressure of loan repayment.
But even to this extent, self-blame and guilt still follow. When she was most anxious, Hu Chunxue didn't eat for three days. I often can't sleep at night. At that time, her mind was full of feelings of "sorry for her parents". During the pandemic, both elderly people lost their jobs. She always felt that it was because she bought the house by mistake that she made her parents bear the consequences together.
Compared with this kind of evasion, Ren Qianli in Zhengzhou adopted a confrontational method of frequently going to the construction site to "supervise the work". He is a project manager himself and has some knowledge of building structures and materials. After the resumption of work in a small area, during the break, he would often stare at the construction of the construction team and take pictures of the materials to prevent the developer from cutting corners after the resumption of work.
On one occasion, he spotted a vehicle full of floors passing by, but there was no environmental rating on the outer box. He followed the phone number above and found that there was no floor of that brand at all. He called the original manufacturer again, and the manufacturer decided that it was a counterfeit product. The next day, the Market Supervision Bureau came over and returned the "inferior floor".
▲ Ren Qianli photographed a vehicle full of floors when he was "supervising" in Evergrande Health Valley. Photo / Courtesy of the interviewee
There are also some owners who choose to take a more direct approach to the resumption of work – such as collective mortgage suspension. At that time, Evergrande Science and Technology Tourism City involved at least 4,000 residents waiting for a house. They asked to see the funds in the escrow account, and the government replied, "less than 200 million." Later, the representatives of the owners negotiated with various departments in Jiangxia District and the developer, and ran back and forth 16 times, but the results were not good.
Seeing that the house was making no progress, in April 2022, a barbershop owner said in the community that his shop had closed down due to the epidemic, and he "owed a lot of debt, and really had no money to repay the loan". Two months later, all the owners of the Evergrande No. 1 project in Jingdezhen, Jiangxi Province, "advocated a notice of compulsory loan suspension" circulated on the Internet, which completely ignited the determination of the owners of unfinished buildings to stop the loan.
It was a desperate decision. Li Wenyu said that more than two-thirds of the owners of his real estate have signed a notice to suspend the loan, and they do not want the fate of the next ten years to be planted in the hands of developers. "I can't bear it, no one wants to smash the real money down, and then I can't even make a splash." They decided that if the property does not resume work within the specified time, the monthly bank payment will be forcibly suspended until the property is delivered.
In July 2022, more than 100 property owners across the country successively issued "Compulsory Loan Suspension Notices". However, choosing to suspend the loan means that you may be on the credit blacklist and be sued by the bank. Even, the worst outcome may be, "the money is gone, the house is gone".
Zhou Shiting didn't dare to gamble on the future. To repay the loan on the 20th of each month, the family needs to make up more than 10,000 yuan (down payment of 2 million). The house they bought in Renfu International Health City was postponed three times according to the delivery date. His parents were also anxious, but they didn't dare to let him take the risk of breaking the loan.
In the end, he decided to take the developer to court. According to the purchase contract, the developer did not deliver the original delivery on December 31, 2021, and was overdue for more than 90 days, so it was necessary to pay liquidated damages of 2/10,000 of the purchase price, which was calculated as 67,750 yuan.
He said he was doing it to "fight for a breath."
There are many owners who go through legal channels, but the targets of everyone's lawsuits are different. For example, after deciding to suspend the loan, Li Wenyu and the owners chose to sue the bank. They believe that there is misappropriation of sales funds by developers and illegal lending by banks. As property owners, their appeal is that they hope to "reasonably and legally suspend the loan".
"In general, I don't want to be on the credit report, and I want to punish the violations of different departments as a whole. Li Wenyu said.
He even prepared for the worst. His wife is pregnant, and according to the plan, his wife's due date is the original delivery date, but at that time, the house is hopeless to be topped out as scheduled. At the most decisive time, Li Wenyu even thought that the previous investment was all wasted, gritted his teeth, and he saved money to buy a second set. "I don't want this house, but my future baby can't live without a home. ”
Wear and tear
With the passage of time and time of the original delivery, in the anxiety of waiting for the resumption of work in the unfinished building, many things have been worn out, including the body and relationships.
One night in September 2022, when she was still working, Hu Chunxue suddenly felt a stomachache, and at first, she only thought it was an ordinary stomach problem and didn't take it too seriously. When I got home late at night, the pain slowly went down, and I couldn't even feel the presence of my stomach anymore. After calling her boyfriend, she was immediately taken to the hospital, where she was diagnosed with acute appendicitis.
The doctor said that it was fortunate that it was delivered in time, "otherwise it would be life-threatening." After the surgery, she was hospitalized for a month.
On the one hand, there is a mortgage to be repaid, and on the other hand, the body collapses. "It's like drawing circles in place. Hu Chunxue said that she gradually realized that when she tried to repay the loan and wanted to make more money, she had to keep taking projects and traveling. And illness is also a sign of anxiety, her work belongs to the engineering category, and she is often on the construction site, and the environment is not good. After working hard, my body couldn't bear it anymore, "I can't calculate this account".
At the beginning of this year, after a period of high-intensity overtime, she was hospitalized for a few more days.
At the same time, there are rifts in human relationships.
Hu Chunxue sometimes can't figure it out, she is a designer, her boyfriend is a lawyer, and the salaries of both of them belong to a good level, and they can cope with their respective lives, but they encounter unfinished buildings. "The houses of the two people are unfinished, how can they get married? No one knows if they will hand over the house, what will they do in the future?"
The two people who were dragged by the house fell into the same anxiety. Under huge financial pressure, the two quarreled several times. Originally, I had a plan to get married, but I never talked about it again.
With the real estate unfinished, there is still hope. Last year, not only was real estate dragging them down, but this year, when the whole market has deteriorated, her salary is not as high as it used to be. In February 2023, after many quarrels and several separations and reunions, Hu Chunxue completely broke up with her boyfriend. "If you want to have children after you get married, how do you raise them?"
As such, in China, the house is often tied to marriage. For example, Ren Qianli in Zhengzhou, he bought a wedding house. Last year, he talked about a girlfriend, in his thirties, the family is urging to get married, he thinks, according to the promised delivery date at the end of the year, he hopes to end when the marriage house is confirmed. But the house was unfinished, and the relationship between the two ended without a problem.
For those with families, there are new troubles to deal with while waiting for the unfinished building. The house was unfinished, and the original planned pace of living was disrupted. In September last year, just in time for the birth of Li Wenyu's child, he and his wife could only rent a small apartment, in order to take care of the baby, his mother also came to help, but the family of four was crammed into a rental house, which was really inconvenient.
▲ Picture / Visual China
To do this, they had to rent a larger house and move from a small room to a two-bedroom apartment.
Known as the city with the highest unfinished area in the country, in Chongqing, real estate agent Haiyan can also feel the cold atmosphere of the entire industry after experiencing the impact of unfinished buildings. He has ten years of experience in the industry, and a more subtle change is that by this year, the transaction volume of second-hand houses has gradually exceeded that of new houses. "There are definitely more and more second-hand houses, but what is more obvious is that the supply of new houses has decreased, and no one dares to take land for development. ”
The real estate market is cold, and the developer's capital turnover is not open, which has also exacerbated the phenomenon of unfinished buildings in disguise. According to the statistics of Yudiyun, the transaction volume of commercial housing in the central urban area of Chongqing in 2022 will be 5.8477 million square meters, a year-on-year decrease of 69%, a significant decline. He judged that the entire real estate project has shrunk by 3/4, and as the supply, transaction area, transaction volume, and construction volume are decreasing, the number of people in the industry who need services is also decreasing.
In the same chain, the changes are also at the same frequency. Even the real estate agent industry where they work has basically laid off 3/4 of their workforce. "With fewer houses traded, we definitely have less commissions here. With less money, there are fewer practitioners who can be fed. ”
To some extent, Ren Qianli himself is also a "multiple victim" of the unfinished building. The demolished house has not been relocated for more than three years, and the building that has been delayed and has been unfinished for many years has been bought, and the construction site where he works is also in arrears. This year, in the two projects he did, one project in the first half of the year, the boss owed a total of more than 50,000 yuan, and he didn't give a dime at the beginning, and only gave 30,000 yuan later. In the second half of the year, he worked for another three months, and so far, he has only received one month's salary.
"The biggest change for me is that I have a clear understanding of the rules by which society works. "A lot of the effects happen in a cascading manner. According to the average price of Ren Qianli to buy a house, the price of more than 7,000 square meters, later, this price fell to about 45,000 square meters. Housing prices are falling, and buying a house is a loss of money. In that area, it was originally promised to build a nine-year primary school, but later, the school disappeared, the nature of the land used changed, and the prospects for the development of the area seemed to have depreciated.
Last year, Ren Qianli also worked with many owners of unfinished buildings in Zhengzhou to try various ways to resume work. A year later, he felt a deeper sense of powerlessness, and he tried to accept the reality, "At least we have tried, but (the unfinished) happened to be touched by us, and the times let us take over, and we have to take over."
Turn
A new turnaround has emerged.
In the past, Hu Chunxue was a person who worked hard to make progress, and she hoped to achieve her wishes through hard work. So she worked hard to save money, and two years after graduating from college, she realized her dream of "wanting to be the first person in her class to buy a house". After that, in the face of unfinished business, she worked hard to reduce the pressure on the mortgage and her family.
But what did she get in the end? The unfinished building brought her huge self-blame, two hospitalizations, and a breakup with her lover......
In May 2023, Hu Chunxue made a decision that she didn't want to stay up late and work overtime anymore. To do this, she changed jobs, gave up higher salaries, worked less urgently, and began to have a life of her own.
There has also been new progress in unfinished real estate. In 2022, after the owners of unfinished buildings in many places across the country issued a "Loan Suspension Statement", the 728 Politburo meeting made it clear that it was necessary to promote the resumption and delivery of unfinished building projects, thus starting a vigorous "guaranteed delivery" action. The central bank, the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, the Ministry of Finance and other departments have introduced a number of measures to release more than 500 billion yuan of special loans for guaranteed delivery of buildings.
Driven by the bailout funds, some typical, well-known, and long-unfinished real estate projects have made new progress. Hai Yan, a real estate agent, said that this year, Chongqing's unfinished buildings have been resumed one after another, "July and August last year was the concentrated outbreak period of unfinished buildings, and January this year is obviously the start and repair period."
Hu Chunxue's Optics Valley Galaxy Painting applied for a special loan of 417 million yuan. By June 27 this year, the first batch of deliveries was achieved in Area A, and Area B is expected to complete construction by the end of the year. After buying a house for three years and postponing it for 9 months, Hu Chunxue finally got her own house.
▲ Hu Chunxue was taken while walking on the river beach. Photo / Courtesy of the interviewee
There is also a small piece of good news - due to the national interest rate cut, the monthly payment has dropped to 7,400 yuan, and she paid the mortgage that has been suspended for half a year, and paid more than 40,000 yuan in one go.
But not everyone is as "lucky" as Hu Chunxue, she heard that her ex-boyfriend's house in Sunac Park Daguan was originally scheduled to be delivered in October this year, but she is still rushing to work.
This shows that the "guaranteed delivery of the building", which has high hopes from the owners of unfinished buildings, is still arduous. According to the survey data of the Centennial Construction Network, from March to May this year, there were 1,114 guaranteed delivery projects across the country, and as of May this year, the proportion of guaranteed delivery buildings has been delivered is 34%. Among them, the proportion of deliveries in South China reached 56%, 40% in East China, and 15% and 16% in Southwest and Central China respectively.
But handing over on time is still not the end of the year. As Haiyan said, some once unfinished real estate, in order to ensure delivery, "its quality will still be discounted".
The developer of Zhou Shiting's house in Renfu International City in Hubei Province held a delivery ceremony for buildings 1-6 in the first phase, while the 7-9 in the second phase is still the construction site. The current situation is that the delivered houses do not meet the delivery standards agreed in the contract - not only has the natural gas not been accepted, but the elevators have also been locked up by the supplier due to arrears of project payment, and the overall greening project has not been completed.
He continued to fight a lawsuit with the developer, although he won the first instance, but in the second instance, the Intermediate People's Court discounted the late payment of liquidated damages by 2.5 percent, and only changed the judgment to 16,000 yuan.
On the other hand, because he didn't want to be consumed by the house anymore, he chose to repay the loan in advance - on July 20, Zhou Shiting repaid 95% of the mortgage in one go, including more than 300,000 yuan of interest. "If I keep repaying the loan, I think it's a big loss. I didn't get the house either, so why did I keep repaying the loan, so I still left a little tail. ”
There are also some people who, in the year when the real estate is unfinished, are trying to rebuild order in their lives - they are no longer exhausted.
Li Wenyu's house in Evergrande Science and Technology Tourism City, I heard that it will be delivered by the end of this year. As a father of a one-year-old child, he feels that he has no strength to "fight" with the developer anymore, but devotes all his body and mind to work and family, "as long as he can collect the house, as long as there are no big flaws, it doesn't matter."
He learned to live hard. At 7 o'clock in the evening, the first thing he did when he came home from work was to tease his son, make him steamed eggs and fish soup for dinner, and before going to bed, he would make a bottle of milk powder with warm water for his son. It has been more than a year since the building was unfinished, and his child is more than a year old and has learned to call "Dad" and "Mom".
It's just that sometimes he is still unwilling, why is it himself? For Ren Qianli, he wants to work hard to make up for the loss. He judged that his house in Zhengzhou Evergrande Health Valley is expected to be closed on May Day next year, and he is considering working in a steel mill in Indonesia, "I still want to make back the money I lost."
As for going abroad, the opinion of the people around him is that they have doubts about safety at first, but after learning about it, they all express their support, and his friends also think that the opportunities over there may be greater. When watching the Douyin video, he felt that Indonesians were happy every day, and he himself was still thinking about marriage and family, and behind all this, money was needed. For him, only by going abroad to work can he get a salary of nearly 20,000 yuan.
Wuhan Optics Valley, where Hu Chunxue bought a house, is a place full of struggles and dreams. It is surrounded by Huawei, Xiaomi and other leading companies, as well as major state-owned enterprises. When she bought it, she thought that "everyone has a high salary, many job opportunities, and a strong working atmosphere".
She had fantasized many times about what she should decorate her new house into: it should be the house of her dreams, the house of her dreams. But now that she woke up, she saw the competitive lot, and all she felt was a lot of noise.
Looking back on the past year or so, she concluded: "From June to December this year, this is the best half of my life in the past two years. Changing jobs and no longer working overtime, Hu Chunxue's mentality has changed dramatically. In the past, she was not stingy with spending, wanted to make money, and had various desires and ambitions for life. Now, she feels that no matter how hard she tries and how hard she fights, those things don't seem to be for herself, but for others.
Even the perception of the house has changed. "I just need the joy of a house, but is it that important?" she was surprised to find that she didn't really need a house after taking possession of the house.
Now, she still lives in a rented house, which is by the river in Wuchang. She raised a golden gradient kitten, and after work, she went home to cook, and then led the kitten to the river for a walk. It made her feel at ease. She calculated that the current rent is more than 1,000 yuan per month, and she decided to live in the new house and rent it out, so she can receive 3,000 yuan in rent every month. In this way, there is less pressure to repay the mortgage, and the remaining money can be used for life.
"My current life is that as long as I am comfortable, as long as I am happy, everything is fine, and everything else has to work hard, buy something, get married and have children, I have two words at all, 'follow fate'. If you don't, you don't have it, it doesn't matter. She said.
▲ The cat who has been with Hu Chunxue. Photo / Courtesy of the interviewee
(Except for Zhou Shiting, the rest of the interviewees are pseudonyms)
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