Building a better home market, one step at a time (2)

At the same time, potential home buyers need to realize that no single policy device will be enough to both give speculators the boot and lower property costs in one fell swoop. Any move now will affect the market as a whole, including investors and real buyers. Accomplishing the complicated task of setting China's unruly housing market to rights will likely require years of work and scores of additional policy maneuvers on numerous fronts which together add up to a nuanced and sophisticated regulatory framework that protects real home seekers. We can see evidence of this within the past week alone - not only in Qi Ji's remarks but also in the Ministry of Land and Resources' calls to regional bureaus for help creating a national land use plan aimed at expanding land allotments for home construction.

Right now, it may be hard to look beyond the clunky and unwieldy aspects of the government's restrictions on real estate - especially considering China's explosive demand for quality housing - but this perhaps has less to do with the inherent flaws in recent policies and more to do with the fact that the architecture supporting them is still a work-in-progress.