How Many People Has Buying a Home Driven Mad?

On September 12, in Renshou County, Meishan City, Sichuan Province, hundreds of owners of Sunac Future City launched a rights-protection action, demanding that the developer terminate contracts and refund home payments, but were suppressed by large numbers of police. (Video screenshot)

[People News] In China, buying a home of one’s own actually requires draining the savings of both spouses and their parents—and even grandparents on both sides—emptying the lifetime savings of three generations and turning all these elders into mortgage slaves as well. As the mainland economy continues to decline and housing prices plunge, China’s property market has erupted with a wave of “negative equity,” which has already caused many mortgage holders to collapse emotionally. Many homeowners, due to unemployment or pay cuts, now face the risk of being unable to repay their mortgages and having their homes auctioned off by the courts. Those affected are not only young couples, but also the elders who once helped them buy their homes—who overnight become debt-ridden families themselves, facing the predicament of having nothing left.

Recently, a Chinese female blogger posted a video recounting how she personally witnessed a ride-hailing driver on the brink of despair, a scene that made one’s nose sting with emotion. She said: “These days, the most despairing thing isn’t not having a car or a house, and it’s not that you can’t afford to get married. It’s that one day, all of a sudden, a group of people barges into your home and kicks you out of the place you’ve lived in for many years. Everything you paid before is gone, and from now on, every month you still have to pay them on time.”

The blogger said that a few days earlier, while she was riding in a ride-hailing car, the driver received a phone call midway and then completely broke down. He slammed on the brakes, pulled over to the side of the road, and began wailing loudly, pounding the steering wheel hard with his hands while crying out: “It’s over, it’s all over for this lifetime.” He even slammed his head against the car door, shaking the entire vehicle. His frantic behavior was truly frightening.

The blogger quickly helped the driver turn off the engine and supported him as they walked to the roadside to sit down. But the driver rolled around on the ground while crying bitterly, looking as if his soul had been drained from his body.

After he calmed down, the driver told the blogger his story: his mortgage had gone into default, and the call he had just received was to notify him that his home was about to be put up for judicial auction. He had bought the apartment in 2019, when housing prices were at their peak. His parents had used their lifetime savings to help him pay the down payment. Unexpectedly, within two years housing prices dropped by nearly half, and the entire down payment was wiped out. Now, with the impending auction, not only would the house be gone, but he would still owe the bank a large sum of money.

Previously, the driver earned a little over 6,000 yuan a month. He had not wanted to buy a house, but without one he couldn’t get married, so he gritted his teeth and went through with it. With subsidies from his family, he barely managed to repay a monthly mortgage of over 5,000 yuan. However, half a year ago, he was laid off by his company. In his thirties, he couldn’t find another job and could only come out to drive for a ride-hailing platform.

To scrape together enough money for the mortgage, he worked both ride-hailing and food delivery: when ride-hailing forced him to rest, he delivered food; when food delivery forced him to rest, he drove ride-hailing. He was gambling with his life just to hold on to that apartment he hardly had any time to live in. By the time he picked up this ride, he had already gone more than a day without sleep. Meanwhile, his wife had also begun talking about divorce. The driver said sorrowfully, “I just want to live properly. I just want to have a home. Why is it so hard?”

The blogger said that she told the driver at the time: this outcome is not your fault; you have no fault at all. You worked desperately to earn money, you didn’t drink, gamble, or visit prostitutes, and you didn’t break the law. The fault lies in this environment. So don’t hurt yourself over this—try to think it through. As long as you are alive, anything can be started over again. After hearing these words of comfort, the driver’s condition improved just a little.

The blogger sighed emotionally: how many people has a single apartment driven mad! Buying isn’t right, not buying isn’t right either. If you don’t buy, they make it so your family line is cut off; if you do buy, they tie you up tightly and you have to keep transfusing it with money nonstop. Once you can’t keep paying, you lose everything. The “People’s Republic” has only been established for seventy years, yet it puts people on the hook for thirty years of mortgages. Who can guarantee that those thirty years will all go smoothly? Once something unexpected happens, everything goes down the drain.

Xiong’an New Area has become China’s largest unfinished construction project. (Online image)

According to a report by the Securities Times on October 16 this year, data monitored by the “China Index Academy” judicial auction database show that as of the end of September, during the first three quarters of 2025, the total number of various types of properties listed for judicial auction nationwide reached 547,000 units. However, the cumulative number of successfully transacted auctioned properties was only about 122,000 units.

In fact, whether it is judicial auction or mortgage default, either can plunge homeowners into despair.

According to unofficial statistics compiled in November 2023 by Zhihu blogger “Life Goose,” at that time there were about 348 unfinished residential projects nationwide, involving approximately 9 million housing units. These 9 million homeowners, along with the elders who had emptied their wallets to support them in buying homes, were instantly plunged into despair.

Under enormous economic pressure, victims of unfinished housing projects across the country frequently gather together to demand that developers deliver the homes or refund the payments. In recent years, because the number of unfinished projects in many cities has been too large, desperate homeowners have ultimately made the decision to “stop paying mortgages and default.” For example, in July 2022, homeowners from as many as 52 stalled or unfinished projects in cities including Zhengzhou, Wuhan, Nanchang, Changsha, Taiyuan, and Xi’an issued notices of mortgage payment suspension. Reportedly, the developers involved included Evergrande, Seazen Holdings, Sunac China, Kangqiao Joy Life, Xinyuan Services, Zhengshang Industrial, and Better Life Property, among others.

The CCP’s official media outlet Securities Times even published a special commentary on this matter, stating that recently some owners of unfinished housing projects collectively decided to stop repaying mortgages, prompting imitation by many other unfinished-project owners. If this trend were to spread, it could have a negative impact on the property market, be even more unfavorable to property sales, and also be detrimental to the stability of the financial system.

Besides threatening homeowners not to stop mortgage payments or default, the article also sought to shift the responsibility for the financial crisis caused by the collapse of the real estate industry onto the broad masses of homeowners. The article also exposed the CCP authorities’ alarm at homeowners’ decisions to “stop paying mortgages and default.” If homeowners were to all stop repaying, the CCP’s scheme of harvesting the people like leeks would fail.

Netizens on the X platform commented in response that under CCP tyranny, the “state” itself is the one setting the trap: “This is an exploitative ‘state’ that only takes from the people and offers no rescue measures whatsoever,” and “Now we finally understand why all of China is shouting about ‘lying flat.’” △