Ms Lucy Wang finds herself at the sharp end of crisis seeping through China's property market. She once dreamt that buying an under-construction apartment in the northern city of Zhengzhou would be her ticket to a new life.

For a woman from a farming village, the 250,000 yuan (S$50,000) down payment she used to secure the property represented a big outlay. Half of the money had come from her parents, who had put aside years of meagre savings from selling the potatoes and wheat they grew on the family plot.