Business news for Mon, 24 Dec 2007 & with words forecast+property. 3 news.

THE prospects of rising profit for China Pacific Insurance (Group) Co have created a buzz among stock analysts who forecast that the insurer's stock is likely to jump about 50 percent on its A share debut today in Shanghai. Everbright Securities Co expects shares of Pacific Insurance to be between 42.60 yuan (US$5.81) and 44.30 yuan apiece, up from its offering price of 30 yuan. Guotai Jun'an Securities has a higher valuation of 43.80 yuan to 46.80 yuan while Haitong Securities sees a range of 40.64 yuan to 45.22 yuan. Pacific Insurance raised 30 billion yuan in its Shanghai initial public offering last week, making it the sixth-biggest IPO on the Chinese mainland. The Shanghai-based insurer sold one billion yuan-backed new shares, or 13 percent of its enlarged capital, at the top end of its offering price range of 27 yuan to 30 yuan. "Pacific is the sole comprehensive insurer whose business is balanced between life and property and casualty insurance," said Pan

UK house prices fell the most in three years in December and the threat of more declines may cause the property market to seize up in 2008, Hometrack Ltd said. The average cost of a home in England and Wales slipped for a third month, dropping 0.3 percent to 175,200 pounds ($347,877), the London-based research group said yesterday. The number of property transactions will fall 17 percent and prices will rise just one percent next year, Hometrack forecast. Bank of England policy makers said this month that a drop in house prices seemed "more pronounced" than expected as they cut their benchmark interest rate for the first time in two years. Record debt, higher mortgage costs and the property market's worst performance since 1995 have discouraged homebuyers. "The second half of the year has seen a major reversal in confidence," Richard Donnell, director of research at Hometrack, said in a statement. "Just as the financial markets have faced a liquidity

RAPID urbanization as well as robust demand for homes will continue to boost the country's real estate industry in 2008, industry analysts said. Wei Bo, a property analyst with Central China Securities Company, sees three main factors as being responsible for the strong demand. "New demand from the country's urbanization progress, growing requirement for larger and better homes among the Chinese, as well as rising investments caused by the appreciation of the Chinese currency and the existing negative interest rates, will probably help the real estate industry's fortune for another year," Wei said. "We expect the industry to maintain its high pace of development and give it a 'better than broad market' rating." China is seeing probably one of the largest urbanization in the world. According to an earlier forecast by the United Nations, between 16 million and 22 million people will migrate from rural places to urban areas in the country each year from now