Give us our homes! The angry victims of China’s property crisis

By Don Weinland

Gu Lin chose the apartment at One Riviera because of its location: a quiet residential neighbourhood just a few kilometres south of Shanghai’s financial district and a short bike ride from the Huangpu river, which bisects the city into east and west. Although Gu had to pay a premium for such an area, he reckoned it made the flat more likely to hold its value if the property market, as he suspected it would, eventually ran out of steam.

He made a 70% downpayment on the 20m yuan ($2.8m) flat in March 2020. His wife and their child, along with Gu’s parents, were due to move into the three-bedroom home in spring 2022. Gu, who is from Shanghai and has a well-paid, management-level job, imagined strolling with his family beneath the 300 cherry trees the developer planned to plant next to the two residential towers. But almost two years after the family were meant to get the keys, One Riviera is still a building site.