Housing speculators from Wenzhou City in southeastern China are switching their money from property into gold following government restrictions on the real estate market.

Tao Xingyi, president of Beijing-based Jinding Group, a company specializing in high-end gold trading and investment, said the company’s customers have increased by 300?-- 400 percent recently.

According to the Southland Metropolis Daily, a newspaper based on Hainan Island, most of the gold buyers belong to the "Wenzhou Real Estate Mission," a group of property investors from Wenzhou who have been blamed for soaring house prices. Tao said that within one month, three groups of Wenzhou investors made purchases of gold from his company worth more than 10 million yuan.