China's Property Sector, Just Before The Crash

On Friday, China’s State Council released a statement calling for higher down payments for second homes in cities and demanding both the collection of taxes on secondary sales and the enforcement of existing property curbs. The document, capping Premier Wen Jiabao’s three-year campaign to cool the housing sector, comes at a time when both Beijing’s National Bureau of Statistics and private surveys show an acceleration of residential prices across China.