When a WhatsApp notice told about 60 households at a gated community on the outskirts of Addis Abeba, the Country Club Developers (CCD), that their water would be cut unless each paid 35,000 Br, it was, residents say, only the latest and one of the smallest of the demands they have met since buying into one of the country's largest housing estates.

The pattern beneath it is the real story. Decades on, the Developer still runs the whole estate, still bills the people who live in it, and still has not handed it over. The dispute is not only a water pump but about whether buyers purchased finished homes or a stake in a half-built city, and who is bound to pay for the rest.

For several homebuyers, their contracts appeared to make it clear that the Developer would deliver the houses with infrastructure for water, electricity, and roads. The Developer says its duty was narrower.

The estate, not fully gated until recently, was drawn up for more than 4,000 houses set among a tennis court, a children's playground, a shopping centre, a school, a five-star hotel, a hospital and clinic, an 18-hole PGA-standard golf course, and a cinema as well as a convention centre.

It was split into two parts, the first covering 12 phases. After nearly 20 years, residents say that only a little over 1,700 homes have changed hands, held back partly by rising construction costs and partly by the Oromia Regional Government not having given the Developer the remaining land.

What stands today is far from that drawing. Speaking on condition of anonymity, homebuyers describe a children's playground that has been demolished and built over with a new house, though the sign still reads "children's playground." On the far side of the compound, the promised golf course has not taken shape, the ground left under construction dirt even as buyers paid a premium over the list price for houses beside it.

Roads within the CCD remain unfinished, with broken lights and, in places, wooden sticks propping up electrical cables. According to some members of the community, the contractor should long since have stepped back from day-to-day control but has not, because the houses remain unfinished.

For these property buyers, the recurring need for money is the most pressing grievance, with a long history. It opened with a half-million Birr contribution in 2011, followed by a letter issued in 2019 that turned a 200,000 Br loan, initially presented as payable in kind, into a binding liability.

In 2025, the homeowners' Association tried to raise 1.4 billion Br by asking each owner for 400,000 Br, a plan that collapsed in the face of resistance. In the same year, 100,000 Br was informally collected from owners in Phases 10 and 11 to address water shortages. The following year, the 35,000 Br demand for Phases seven, eight and nine, again for water, was enforced by cutting the pipes of those who would not pay.

The most recent levy is where the mechanics are most evident. The Developer stated that the fix for the water supply is to install new pumps to move water from the reservoir to the homes. It listed the cost of a pair of pumps at almost 6.9 million Br in a pro forma invoice dated November 28, 2025, posted on the homebuyers’ WhatsApp page. But they argue the market price is far lower.

On May 17, 2026, the Developer posted the house numbers of those who had not paid on the same page, and residents say CCD has since disconnected water service to the homes of owners who refused to pay. They read the sequence as a method, not a run of accidents.

Residents complain that the CCD alone identifies the problem, designs the fix, sets the price and does the work, without competitive bidding or independent oversight, then turns the estate's own utilities into leverage. Infrastructure, they argue, is the Developer's obligation until the site is handed over, and customary practice requires the developer to complete and maintain the site until transfer.

Instead, the handover has been avoided, and the estate has been treated as a source of revenue through contributions that have steadily become more compulsory.

The governance meant to check this has frayed. The President of the Homeowners Association, Getachew Diriba (PhD), has submitted a formal resignation letter. Residents also fault the Board itself, claiming that most members have sided with the Developer and focused on collecting money from owners to pass to CCD, an approach that has been tried several times without success.

The Vice President of the Association, Abeselom Demeke, offered a more measured account. According to Abeselom, the Developer still manages the community, and talks over the missing infrastructure have taken place, but have reached no conclusion.

“The idea was to divide the costs, with residents paying a part and the Developer covering the rest, an effort that ‘didn't succeed’ so far,” he told Fortune. “The requests for money are tied partly to rising material costs that the Developer could not carry alone.”

It is also partly due to changes made in areas already built where further adjustments were needed. Abeselom hopes that, on handover, the matter will be settled by the Developer, and that the Home Owners Association (HOA) will sort problems into those it has to handle and those that fall to the Developer.

However, the Developer's case rests on a single distinction.

"It’s the service only, not the maintenance," said Messele Haile (PhD), general manager of CCD. “Maintenance has been hard to transfer because the Association has not yet taken on full management.”

According to Messele, a renowned architect, gated communities can be run three ways. The Developer directly runs the daily affairs, a homeowners' Association can take over, or management can be outsourced to an outisde company.