Just how risky are China’s housing markets?

``Our look at the available data strongly suggests that prices are quite risky at current levels, and that it would take little more than a modest decline in expected appreciation to engender sharp drops in prices. The first foundation of this conclusion is that home prices in China are at their all time highs, and have been appreciating at especially high rates recently... Real prices more than doubled over the past decade, with appreciation rates escalating at the beginning of 2007 and then again in early 2009. The most recent data show a record 41% (annualized) growth rate for the first quarter of 2010.''