Polarized home price predictions confuse buyers

With the growth picking up pace, predictions about the property market's future trajectory have become even more polarized.

"If the past 10 years can be hailed as 'the Golden Decade' of China's property market, what follows will be 'the Platinum Decade'," says Zhou Xin, chair of the Shanghai-based E-house China, a leading real estate service provider.

Dong Fan, a professor from Beijing Normal University, adds that "it's not difficult to foresee that houses in Beijing will reach over 800,000 yuan ($130,000) per square meter 25 years from now."

Corresponding to their optimism are warnings from other pundits that buyers should act with caution as the bubble-prone property market has accumulated many risks.

"The growth momentum in first- and second-tier cities highly resembles the 1980s property market in Japan, whose housing bubble finally burst. We should be more cautious," warns Wang Shi, chair of Vanke, China's largest residential developer.

Guo Shiping, head of the financial research institute at Shenzhen University, said this year's property market is expected to post a bad performance, with prices in some cities likely to fall as much as 50 percent.

These divergent predictions do not shed any light on the situation for ordinary buyers as nobody can tell for sure which side will win the argument.

"Sometimes, I think about giving up on the idea of buying a house as that will save me from all the troubled confusion," Chu says.

"But without a house, what is the difference between me and the so-called homeless 'ant tribe'? Without my own home, I will always feel like a passerby here in this city."