中国楼市

China's once buoyant property market is facing some rough sailing. In fact, accordi ng to onetycoon -- Soho China Ltd's chief Pan Shiyi -- the real estate market is lookin g more like theTitanic headed in the direction of an iceberg.

Mr. Pan, the co-founder and chairman of Soho China Ltd., is taking a very bearish vie w on thehousing market, which has struggled this year. In the first four months of the year, home saleswere down 9.9% from the same period a year ago in value terms, offi cial data shows. New construction starts -- as calculated by area -- were down almost 25% year over year in thesame period.

As if that's not bad enough, demand is also weakening in an expanding number of cit ies asbanks tighten mortgage lending and sales are dampened by widespread expecta tions of pricecuts.

'I think China's property market is like the Titanic and it will soon hit an iceberg in fr ont of it,'Mr. Pan told a financial forum on Friday, according to the China Business N ews.

'After hitting the iceberg, the risks will not only be in the real estate sector. The bigge r risk willbe in the financial sector,' he added.

He said serious problems lie with financial products like trust and wealth management products,as well as entrusted loans that charge higher interest rates than banks and ar e key financing vehicles for the property sector.

'When housing prices fall 20% to 30%, these problems will be all exposed, ' he was q uoted assaying.

Soho China declined to comment about Mr. Pan's remarks. But in a post on his verifi ed Weibo account Monday, Mr. Pan said that during the forum's question and answer s ession, hehad first asked whether there were any journalists present before replying to a question aboutthe housing market. Only upon being told there were no reporters pre sent, he said, did he proceed to answer.

'I didn't expect there are countless reporters hiding [in the audience], ' he said.

Soho has been putting at least some of its money where Mr. Pan's mouth is -- that is, b ytaking it out of the local property market.

In February, Soho China, run by Mr. Pan and his wife Zhang Xin, announced plans t o sell all oftheir interest in Soho Hailun Plaza and Soho Jing'an Plaza in Shanghai for about 5.23 billion yuan($853 million) to Financial Street Holdings, a Shenzhen-listed property developer.

It isn't all bad news though for China's property market, and help may be on the way.

The central bank has instructed commercial banks to make mortgage lending a prior ity.Likewise, some local governments have taken steps to ease their curbs on home pu rchases,which were put in place when prices seemed to be soaring out of reach for mo st of China's 1.3billion people. They've also eased restrictions on residency requireme nts and in some caseshave rolled back curbs on buying a second or third home.

But these measures have been relatively modest so far and Beijing has not given the market aclear signal it can go back to its old speculative ways.

Though Mr. Pan didn't comment on the government's moves to soften property curb s, he didsay he believes many forces -- including plans for a nationwide property regi stry, an expandeduse of the property tax and more land for development as a result of rural land reform -- willhelp drive the market lower.

'I am not optimistic about China's property prices,' he said.

If a property specialist like Mr. Pan thinks the market is close to a Titantic moment, p erhaps it'sa good idea for to stay close to the life boats.