Chinese property developer Shimao Group Holdings paid Rmb24bn ($3.3bn) in 2017 for land earmarked for a prestige commercial project that would be dominated by a 500-metre-tall skyscraper, with commanding views of Shenzhen.
The price was a record at the time for the fast-growing southern city that borders Hong Kong, but six years on, those plans are unrealised and the land was put back up for sale this month at a heavily discounted $1.8bn. Yet it still received no bids in the online auction ordered by a Beijing court after Shimao had defaulted on its debts.
The undeveloped and unwanted plot is one among many examples of a paralysis that has for almost two years gripped a real estate industry that is critical to China’s economy.