回复qlmj的评论:
it is not leasing, it is called reverse mortgage, backed by government, not everyone eligible. after you pay off your mortgage, you can sell it back to bank, but instead bank pay you a lump sum of money once, they pay you with a monthly installment, like you are selling a mortgage to bank, hence the name.
The old lady's financing is in essence a lease. Many Chinese people are too addicted to the idea of owning, rather than leasing. Leasing has a lot benefit - do not occupying a lot of you liquid assets, do not need to worry about the price of property, and do not need to pay taxes. Of course, you lose the opportunity of assets appreciation. But you can save cash to invest elsewhere in more liquid assets such as CD, stock or bond. I tend to distinguish a property's function of "using" and "investment" but a lot of Chinese want to have a product of both of such functions (and more than often, owning one property of those two aspects is worse than having two properties each having a specific purpose).
