I was heading to New York, where I had decided to rent an apartment. Thirty years of mortgage payments I had been shelling out in London, Bath, Cardiff and Spain, where I had bought property at ...

There is one thing the estate agent hasn't mentioned on the listing for this 1,360 sq ft apartment in the south of the city... there is a toilet in one of the bedrooms - with no door.

Some are flocking to places like Hegang, a cold and remote coal mining city in northeastern China famous for shockingly cheap housing prices. As resources dried up and mines closed, young people left, ...