Two nearly complete luxury housing estates in Tianjin, once the envy of builders because of healthy pre-sales, will be torn down due to dried up credit and multiple safety violations, Chinese media reported.
In China, it is not uncommon to see relatively new buildings torn down, wasting an average of over $70 billion a year, according to research conducted by China Academy of Building Research (CABR) in 2014.
The reasons for demolishing buildings early vary.
The two luxury residential complexes in Tianjin were found to have had many safety violations. One frustrated condo owner, Zhang Xin, told Faren (a luxury magazine in China) that she learned that the eight buildings in her complex were built too close together.
Experts in Tianjin mapped out the building last year and found the design falls below standard in terms of provisions for emergency evacuation, including building apartments where the evacuation space should be, and making the public space in the first and second floors of buildings No.1 to No.4 too narrow.
