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Sun Ting was furious. "Can you believe this? The money I spent on a 130-square-meter apartment four months ago won't get me a 100-square-meter flat in the same building these days," fumed the 28-year-old company executive as he browsed the housing options - or non-options - at Beijing Spring Real Estate Trade Fair last month.

Last year, Beijing's property prices saw double-digit growth for seven months in a row, making it the hottest real estate market among all major Chinese cities.

This unceasing price appreciation has naturally raised concerns about a real estate bubble. Is the Olympics driving up the prices? Will the bubble burst after the Games? Should I wait a little longer to buy a house? These are the questions Beijingers like Sun Ting are increasingly asking these days.

Beyond Games

"The Olympics are fueling Beijing's property market, true, but it is not the primary factor," says Mao Daqing, general manager of the Beijing operations of CapitaLand (China) Investment Co Ltd. The real driving force, he believes, is the strong demand not only generated by Beijing residents themselves but also by others planning to settle down in the capital.

According to Qin Xiaomei, head of the research department of the commercial real estate services firm CB Richard Ellis's Beijing branch, about 10 percent of the property price rise can be attributed to the coming Olympics. The other factors are far less transient.

After all, houses don't exist in a vacuum. If the economy grows, it's only natural for real estate prices to rise. China's gross domestic product has maintained a growth rate of over 8 percent for years now, while that for Beijing hovered around 12 percent last year, higher than the average growth in a decade.

"The end of the Games won't mean the end of this booming economy, so it's unlikely that the property market will crash after the Games," says CapitaLand's Mao. "In fact, the boost that the city has received in terms of infrastructure, transportation and facilities will begin to show only after the Games."

Of the 1,500 billion yuan of Olympics-related investments in Beijing, only 22 billion yuan, or 1.47 percent, is going into stadiums. Around 280 billion yuan has been poured into infrastructure, while 700 to 800 billion yuan has flown into the property sector, according to Luo Gaobo, who specializes in Olympics and real estate research.

After the end

"Areas around the Games venues will be the biggest beneficiaries, and the city's center will move from the current second ring to the fourth and fifth rings in the northern part, just around the Olympic Garden," said Luo.

In fact, Dream World 2008, a residential project within the Olympic Garden, has sold nearly 90 percent of its units since its opening late last year, with the average price hovering around 16,454 yuan per square meter, according to the Beijing Property Deals Management website.

A comparison with other Olympic host cities could help find an answer to the vexing bubble question. Among the five host cities since 1984, three saw jumps and two experienced drops in their real estate sectors after the Games.

Barcelona and Seoul benefited immensely from the Olympics-induced economic boom, but their residential markets ended up differently once the party was over. Barcelona saw its property price skyrocket by 250 to 300 percent from 1986 to 1993 and then plummet by 50 percent from 1993 onwards, after the Olympics in 1992.

Seoul, however, experienced a flourishing real estate market long after the Olympic Games in 1988 and the momentum didn't flag until 1995.

"There is some relationship between Olympic Games and the property market of the host cities, but not as close as people may imagine," said Luo Gaobo. "Beijing might end up like Seoul rather than Barcelona."

Real estate prices fell in Sydney after the 2000 Games too. But Luo says it was brought about by the improper location of the Olympic Village more than anything else. The Sydney government put the Olympic Village in a suburban area, the reason why it became a ghost town when the Games ended. As for Barcelona, the overly rapid growth in the run-up to the Games was the real estate market's undoing, said Luo.

Different views

Although quite a number of developers share Luo's views and are upbeat on Beijing's property market, there are many who beg to differ. They are quite clear in their minds that property price rise will slow down after the Games, some experts even forecast a drop afterward.

"The growth rate of Beijing's property prices will stabilize after the Olympic Games," said a top manager of a large property developer who declined to be named.

Andy Xie, ex-chief economist with Morgan Stanley (Asia-Pacific), said late last year that the downward turning point of China's property market might appear after 2008 for cyclical reasons.

The declining rate of growth in real estate investment reflects the cautious approach of property buyers. According to Beijing Statistics Bureau, investment in the city's real estate sector totaled 171.9 billion yuan by the end of last year, up 12.8 percent year-on-year. But the growth rate dropped 28.3 percent compared with early 2006, and that of the residential sector fell from 86 percent early last year to 15.9 percent by the end of December.

The average sales of property last year also dropped to a record eight-year low, a recent report from the economic research institute of National Development and Reform Commission showed. "We are expecting a sluggish property market after 2008 or 2009," the report said.

Beijing Statistics Bureau last week said sales of completed housing dropped 51.8 percent while forward deliveries fell 28.6 percent in the first quarter year-on-year.

"Beijing's property prices are doomed to fall within two to three years," Dai Jianzhong, a professor with Beijing Academy of Social Sciences, was quoted by People's Daily as saying. This forecast, Dai stressed, is based on the political and social, rather than economic, trends.

In his address to the National People's Congress in March, Premier Wen Jiabao promised to finance low-rent housing and increase the availability of affordable housing using fiscally sound tax policies. Therefore, Dai held, as more low-rent and subsidized housing is put into the market, property prices in Beijing will tend to stabilize