Reality check, as Country Garden sells down a barely started Australia project
By Byron Kaye
WILTON, Australia (Reuters) — Four years after Chinese property giant Country Garden launched a A$2 billion ($1.27 billion) development of 3,600 homes an hour's drive southwest of Sydney, the outer suburban site remains a sparse field with fewer than 50 houses under construction.
The «masterplanned community» of Wilton Greens that has promised buyers shady, tree-lined streets, sporting fields, bike paths, parks and a new local school is one of a string of stalled overseas developments the cash-strapped Chinese property giant is now seeking mostly to offload as it scrambles to pay creditors.
In Malaysia, its plans for the $100 billion Forest City development billed as a paradise with turtles and white-sand beaches are far from completion.
On Sydney's outskirts, the lack of certainty around construction at the 433 hectares (1,070 acres) Wilton Greens project where house and land packages start from about A$900,000 ($571,770.00) comes as policymakers race to address a critical housing shortage in Australia's largest city but struggle to provide the needed infrastructure.
The development about 82 km (51 miles) from the city's central business district is 15 km from the nearest public high school, which is full, while the nearest ambulance, hospital and commuter rail services are more than a 20-minute drive away. A lack of sewer services means effluent will have to be piped to a communal tank and driven away daily in trucks until at least 2026.
«They promise you, in the brochure, this fancy landscape where trees are everywhere and flowers are growing and lakes are great to walk around. It's going to be years until it looks like that, decades,» said Sebastian Pfautsch, an associate professor of urban planning at
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