He bought a property in China. Nine years later, he got the key.

After years of delay, the Qifu City condo project in Zhengzhou city, in China’s central Henan province, started handing over keys to homebuyers this summer. Staff on the property attempted to create a festive mood by decorating the entrance with a red balloon banner and a flimsy red carpet held down by loose bricks. Lively Chinese music blasted from a lone speaker.

This month, Chen Peng, a folksinger and songwriter, was finally called in to get his key. He had been waiting nine years.

“I feel a mix of happiness and sadness. I am glad that I finally got my condo, but I am sad that I must resume mortgage payments. I can’t continue my mortgage boycott,” he said.

China’s real estate sector is in a prolonged downturn, which is partly self-inflicted. Though China’s central bank announced stimulus measures aimed at the sector Tuesday, Beijing’s leaders have largely tried to rein in reckless property developers. Officials made it much harder for them to borrow in 2021 and the housing bubble popped. Property giants like Evergrande and Country Garden defaulted on debts and abandoned hundreds of housing projects, and local governments have been tasked with completing millions of unfinished homes.

Last year, government news agency Xinhua reported that 3 million unfinished homes were completed and delivered to buyers. Another 4 million are targeted to be finished by the end of this year, according to the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development. Other analysts estimate that the number of unfinished homes are far higher at 20 million.

Chen bought his condo in 2015, before construction started, because he was nearing 30 and his parents were pressuring him to find a wife. Now, he is 38 and still single. To be a desirable mate in China, he needs to own property.

At first, he felt lucky to have found the Qifu City project because he was offered a discount through a friend. The only catch was he had to put up a higher deposit. Chen used his life savings, a chunk of his parents’ money plus credit cards to make the down payment of just over 50% on a 580,000 yuan (about $82,000) condo in 2015.

The developer, Zhongsheng, ran out of money and stopped construction at the Qifu City site in 2019, according to Chen. He petitioned local officials, protested and then was detained for “illegal gathering.”

“When I was detained by police, a policeman told me that my situation is better than his,” Chen said. The officer “also bought a condo in a rotten tail project.”

A “rotten tail” building is a common term for abandoned construction projects.

Chen released a song about the injustices homebuyers face, but his song was censored on Chinese music platforms and nothing changed. All the while, he was still paying off the mortgage, maxing out credit cards and at one point subsisting on potatoes for 72 days straight just to make the payments.

Chen is one of many who have felt the sting of a rotten tail development.

In 2021, a different developer, property giant Evergrande, started missing key repayments to investors abroad and at home, with unpaid bills totaling $300 billion. Other real estate firms started to crack. Chinese property firms had borrowed excessively and spent lavishly in unrelated sectors such as sports and electric vehicles. Some of that money even trickled into Hollywood.

“Evergrande was famous throughout the country,” said Zhang Fenglian, who bought one of the company’s homes in Chongqing city. He bought a condo for nearly 1 million yuan, or about $140,000, in 2018, when, Zhang said, prices in the area were at their peak. He made the purchase for his son, to help him attract a wife.

Evergrande’s downfall left all its condo projects in limbo, despite the fact that buyers like Zhang had paid for the property in full, or at the very least shelled out a huge down payment and were already making mortgage payments.

The local government invited Evergrande to lease the Chongqing land tax-free without supervision, Zhang said. “The money we paid [already] was not supervised by government financial institutions.”

The China Securities Regulatory Commission in May accused Evergrande of inflating 2019 and 2020 revenue by 560 billion yuan, or roughly $80 billion, and using this fraudulent data to issue bonds. It fined the company’s main Chinese unit, Hengda Real Estate, 4 billion yuan ($577 million). Founder Xu Jiayin, also known by the Cantonese romanization of his name, Hui Ka Yan, was fined 47 million yuan ($6.5 million), and according to Reuters is being detained in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen.

The Zhongsheng executive who was in charge of the Qifu City project, Lu Yibo, was arrested in September 2022 for contract fraud and misappropriation of funds.

Homebuyers stuck with unfinished homes across China pushed back in 2022 by threatening to boycott their mortgages. Chen followed through and has not been making mortgage payments for the past two years.

The bank tried to “sue me twice last year. The court didn’t register the case for the first time, and then directly rejected the case for the second time,” Chen said.

Construction resumed at Qifu City in late 2022, according to local reports.

“Some construction company with a [local] government background took over the project,” Chen said. “The previous real estate developer still had some assets [that were sold off] to pay for the construction.”

Chen’s is among the 60,000-plus condos Zhengzhou city officials aim to deliver this year, after announcing that they had ensured the delivery of nearly 195,000 condos across 291 construction projects last year.

However, buyers can’t expect to get everything they paid for.

Evergrande homebuyer Zhang said the Chongqing government took over the abandoned project, and his unit was delivered in 2022.

“When I bought the unit, I was told there would be a basketball court, a cinema, a soccer field and a swimming pool in the condo complex. But now there is nothing there except for a few trees,” Zhang said.

In the first half of this year, the Chongqing government said it had ensured the delivery of 200,000 apartments across 237 construction projects.

Back in Zhengzhou city, Chen, with friends in tow, approached the door to his new home and inserted the key.

“It won’t turn,” he said to a property staff member. She apologized and went to get another key.

“It’s OK. This building has been a rotten tail for so long, I can wait a bit longer,” Chen said.

Once he got the right key, a friend aimed a confetti popper through the front door, spraying shiny bits of red everywhere.

His three-bedroom condo was barren. It had no light fixtures, no toilet and only concrete floors and walls. To save money, Chen said he bought the place as bare bones as they come.

“I think the place is all right. I didn’t have high expectations,” Chen said. “I was a bit ticked off when I saw the firefighting water pipes were not hidden. But after so many twists and turns to get this condo, I think it’s fine.”

Then he took out a yellow vest, the same one he wore when the police detained him.

“The message on the vest reads: ‘Return my home. Resolutely safeguard my rights,’” Chen said. He wanted a photo of him wearing the vest in his new condo as proof that the protesting was “worth it.”

Over a lunch of lamb noodles, Chen said he wants his place to have a semi-open kitchen, a dishwasher and a Japanese-style bathroom, where the toilet is separate. Otherwise, he doesn’t care much about the furnishings. Chen said he had been collecting used furniture from friends.

“I told my friends that I will decorate my place in the cheapest way possible. I won’t even paint the walls. My plan is to spend between 30,000 yuan ($4,300) and 50,000 yuan ($7,000) on renovations. Many people say that is impossible,” Chen said.

Among the homebuyers stuck with unfinished condos, Chen called himself one of the luckier ones. He did not buy the property when prices were at their peak. New home sales by value fell 25% from January to August compared to the same period last year, according to China’s statistics bureau.

He said the last nine years have felt like being in a dream.

“There is no way to turn back time,” Chen said. “But what if I hadn’t bought this rotten tail project and had found another home in the city? Would I be married by now?”

Additional research by Charles Zhang.