The selection of Beijing as the host city for the 2008 Olympics had an almost immediate and significant impact on the Beijing real estate market. Analysts now anticipate another six to seven years of double-digit GDP growth in the city as a result of massive Olympics-related urban investment. Though the building of residential accommodations for the games' 22,000 participants will lead to a small surge in medium- to high-quality residential supply in the years 2007-08, this amounts to a small percentage of the total number of housing completions that Beijing forecasts for 2002-08--between 10 and 12 million m2 per year, or the equivalent of 670,000 units--within the seven-year period.
