Agreed. Even the edges didn't look finished. It looked very cheap.It's definitely not Hardie. It's some sort of Chinese knock off Hardie panel, and it definitely looks like painted chipboard at the areas it's deteriorating.
Here's another a few blocks down, that was built in 2017. The fading isn't as bad, but still a fair bit of fade from 2017 to 2023 (when the photo was taken) I don't know if it's due to the lighting or not, but it definitely looks like it has faded.