Home improvement

In 2005, Zhao Jiayan, a 29-year-old sales manager in Beijing, had squirreled away 100,000 yuan ($14,600) for the down payment of a two-bedroom apartment in an up-and-coming area west of the capital.

But he held back on his planned purchase, to see if the claimed housing bubble then would burst. He waited until housing prices almost doubled. He waited, until the deposit he saved could fetch him only a bathroom in the community he was eyeing.

"Beijing's property prices have surged at an astonishing speed, far more than my pay," Zhao says.

The Beijinger is one of those "who fell for many economists' assertion that the housing bubble would burst and kept on watching the market hoping that prices would fall", says Li Wenjie, the general manager of property agency Centaline China (North China region).