New Delhi, June 10 -- A Chinese man bought a flat on the 34th floor of a new building. Four years later, he discovered the building only had 32 floors.

The man, surnamed Shen, is from Shaanxi province in northwestern China. In 2013, he purchased a 90-square-metre unit in a village near Xian.

He paid 2,646 yuan ( Rs.37,234*) per square metre, roughly a third of average local prices, according to the South China Morning Post. The discount existed because the flat carried limited property rights.

Limited property rights is an informal term in China for grey-market housing. Such properties are built illegally on collectively owned rural land. They cannot be resold and have no legal protection. Buyers accept these risks because the prices a...