Last Saturday, Chen Huai, doctoral supervisor at Renmin University of China, former director of the Policy Research Center of the Ministry of Construction, and director of the China Urban and Rural Construction Economics Research Institute, visited Nanjing to analyze the 2014 housing market trends.

Chen Huai believes that whether urban housing prices are high or low is closely tied to whether the city's population is growing. In his view, the housing price issue is fundamentally a question of city scale. As urban populations continue to increase and city scale keeps expanding, housing will spread toward the urban periphery. The ultimate result of such expansion is that homes closer to the center become scarcer, and the scarcer they are, the more precious they become.

“In 2014, the state's macro-control of real estate will remain within certain limits and will not involve excessive intervention. The government work report at the Two Sessions focuses more on housing security work.” Chen Huai emphasized that real estate was not only the policy focus of the past decade; in the next decade, China's housing market development will still be market-driven. He stated: “China's real estate will usher in a new golden decade. This decade will also be one of survival of the fittest, and market polarization will intensify, as will be the case in Nanjing.”