Six months ago, China's housing market was so red-hot that Feng Xiaowei, a sales manager at a real estate agency in the eastern city of Hangzhou, rarely took a day off. Now Feng and the seven salespeople he supervises spend the day playing cards."There are no buyers," said Feng, 24. "We take three days off a week. We go out for barbecue and play poker."

China's house prices have marched higher for 15 years, helping to drive an economic boom but making home ownership unaffordable for many families. Now a slump is dragging down economic growth th already was slowing. The banks are now worried that some of some people may fail to re-pay or home loans. Unsold new housing in 35 cities rose in May to a five-year high.

In Hangzhou and another city, Nanjing, new home owners want to get back their money because the builders are selling homes 20% less than what they have paid. Feng, the sales manager, said he used to sell at least two properties a month, in addition to those sold by his staff, but there have been no sales in the past month.

The boom took off in the late 1990s when then-Premier Zhu Rongji started selling housing owned by the government or state companies in which almost all urban Chinese lived."There is just too much housing in Hangzhou," he said. "That's why the price is going down."

Prices have risen so high that an 85 square meter (920 square foot) apartment in an average Beijing neighborhood can cost 4.5 million yuan - the equivalent of more than 180 years of income for the average Chinese person.

Nobody knows what would happen in the coming months and years. People who have bought are worried and those who have money to buy have to wait and see. Buy or not is a question people are asking. A lot of people cannot own homes and continue to pay rent.

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