Researcher plays down profit potential in property market

Potential property-market profits related to the new round of urbanization should not be overestimated, a researcher with a government think tank said on Jan 9.

"People think that the new round of urbanization will definitely push up the property market, which I think is too optimistic," said Qin Hong, director of policy research center under the Ministry of Land and Resource, China's top land and housing authority.

"What I understand about the new urbanization is the quality of the urbanization, about how to change the previously unbalanced, uncoordinated, and unsustainable model," she said.

Vice-Premier Li Keqiang has stressed the need to promote new urbanization on severally occasions recently, a concept that the market regards will be a policy focus in 2013.

Wang Yulin, a researcher with the same institute as Qin, said the property policy in 2013 could be summarized as: no change in houses purchase limit; no change in price limit; and no change in mortgage limit.

"Why are these policies not allowed to change? Because if they were to change today, the price would go up the next day," Wang said. "And if prices were to go up again, I don't know who could stabilize it again."