Now that China's government has limited the purchase of housing in the country's first-tier and second-tier cities, homebuyers are shopping in smaller cities and even remote counties, where housing prices are also soaring, China Securities News reported Monday.

A person surnamed Zhou living in Guangshan, an impoverished county in Central China's Henan province, said he paid 50 percent of the total price to buy an apartment at a price of 1,800 yuan ($272.79) per square meter about 10 months ago, even though the developers have not started construction yet.

He told the newspaper that the planned new apartments were sold out, even though the old houses on the new-home lots haven't been torn down yet. He added that the price of real estate in the development where he bought an apartment had already increased to 3,000 yuan per square meter.

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This is the mode of real estate development in Guangshan county, were developers only have to get a piece of land at auction and print out simple blueprints of the project to attract crowds of homebuyers. They will start construction only when they have absorbed enough capital in the presale, the newspaper reported.

Housing fever in this poor county has attracted many speculators -- both local residents and former residents now working in big cities -- that drive housing prices even higher, the report said.

Some small developers told the newspaper that this kind of real estate market has even bigger risks than buying forward-delivery housing. If the developers encounter capital problems and abandon their project, it will be difficult for homebuyers to get back their advance fees, the report said.