In China, home buyers occupy their ‘rotting’, unfinished properties

GUILIN, China – For six months, home for Ms. Xu has been a room in a high-rise apartment in the southern Chinese city of Guilin that she bought three years ago, attracted by brochures touting its riverfront views and the city’s clean air.

Her living conditions, however, are far from those promised: unpainted walls, holes where electric sockets should be and no gas or running water. Every day she climbs up and down several flights of stairs carrying heavy water bottles filled with a hose outside.

“All the family’s savings were invested in this house,” Xu, 55, told Reuters from the Xiulan County Mansion complex, her room bare except for a mosquito net-covered bed, a few necessiti…

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