January saw the highest increase in housing prices in China from a year earlier. This was 9.5%, which was 1.7 percentage points higher than December’s housing price rise.
Some of the effect was due solely to Hainan where housing prices skyrocketed in January.
The reason was the government has said it planned to turn the tropical southern island in China into an international tourist resort by 2020.
Sanya and Haikou, two major cities on the island, led the national increase in housing prices.
China Daily reported that prices of new houses (which pretty much always lead the charge when it comes to movement in prices) in January rose 11.3% from the same month last year, and were up 1.7% from December 2009.