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Deputies to China's top legislature and members of its top advisory body questioned the huge profits of China's real estate developers and said they were making exorbitant profits in the real estate market.

Real estate developers in China earned profits of at least 1 trillion yuan ($146.5 billion) in 2009, said Chen Wanzhi, a deputy to the National People's Congress (NPC), the Oriental Morning Post reported on Thursday.

The annual session of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), China's top advisory body, opened Wednesday, and the NPC opens Friday.

According to statistics, the sales revenue of China's residential sector in 2009 was more than 3.6 trillion yuan, an increase of 80 percent from the previous year.

Chen, who is also vice chairman of Chongqing municipal committee of the CPPCC, said that the cost of apartments mainly consisted of land transferring fees, construction and installation fees, and management fees. The average cost of homes in 2009 was about 2,500 yuan per square meter, as most developers acquired lands at lower prices as early as 2006.

For example, China Vanke Co, the country's largest property developer by market value, earned 1,082 yuan per square meter in Chongqing's real estate market last year, Chen said. The average price of the city's apartments was about 4,000 yuan per square meter, putting Vanke's profit margin at about 25 percent.

CPPCC member Liu Minghua said the profit rate of developers in the international real estate market was about 5 percent, which was in line with the average profit rate of China's manufacturing industry. However, the profit rate of China's real estate industry was up to 30 percent, making it a windfall-profit industry.

Deputy to NPC Hei Xinwen said that developers would make windfall profits if people have few choices but to purchase houses on the market.

Chen appealed to China's housing industry to focus less on windfall profits and more on providing affordable housing as soon as possible.