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A commercial sign in a luxury residence in Pudong, Shanghai. May 2013. Real estate commercial ads often lure potential buyers with messages and photos depicting a fantasy world of affluence, where social life revolves around glamorous soirées such as the one in the photo. When reading this ad one cannot also help but wonder what sort of influence the developer is referring to and how it can be gauged. This is especially puzzling when contrasting the photo where the models are all Western whereas target buyers are surely not. In any case, they must be running short of influential people, as sales have stagnated lately. However, this does not seem to be an isolated case but a general trend in large cities. This could indicate that the real estate market is losing momentum. The interesting (or troubling) point here is that the decrease in sales can be solely attributed to the invisible hand of the market, for there are no government tightening to control prices currently in place, nor plans to implement any.