In Dongguan, a sprawling factory city in southern China, one real estate developer has cut prices by 15 percent, offered $1,600 worth of free appliances and even brought in a circus and a traveling zoo to move apartments. In Hangzhou, the affluent hometown of the online retailer Alibaba in eastern China, families who paid in advance for new apartments have occupied a stalled, half-finished complex. And in Changsha, a bustling river town in central China where developers built a forest of fancy towers, a third of the modern office space is empty and families are mulling whether to buy in a housing market where prices have fallen 7.4 percent since April or wait for further drops. Every urban real estate market is different in mainland China, driven by myriad municipal and provincial regulations and the varying strength of local economies. But the outcome is the same: […]