China on the move: Hainan sees ups, downs in housing market

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Housing construction has been one of the key industries in China over the past decade. It started even earlier in the southern province of Hainan. The real estate boom there dates back to the early 1990s. Now, after some ups and downs in the past two decades, it's on the rise again.

The price of real estate in Hainan has been skyrocketing over the past three years. This wave of housing fever comes 14 years after its last boom.

Yao Huifen is general manager of a real estate company in Hainan. She has been in the housing industry for more than 20 years. She experienced the very first prosperity of Hainan's housing market as early as 1992.

Yao Huifen said, "Our company was developing very fast in the early 1990s. We experienced the golden time of real estate in Hainan. Everyone was crazy about buying and selling houses. Some of them were investors while others were speculators. We sold our apartments at a little more than 3,000 yuan per square meter. But it rose about 10,000 yuan within a very short time through constant changing of hands from one buyer to another."