It is troublesome for Pingtan residents to decorate their new houses because homeowners must run to many places to select and buy all the building materials. It has led to a common concern: why can't Pingtan have a convenient one-stop shop when it comes to home decoration?

Ms Xie became the latest person to complain after she spent three months sprucing up her second-hand house. She preferred to select building materials for her new house despite outsourcing the decoration work to a construction team.

The consequence was that she had to visit many different streets to pick out decent drapes.

"If the drape stores concentrated a little bit on comparisons I wouldn't have to waste so much time," said Xie, reminiscing about her house decorating nightmare.

Clustering the building material market has never been embraced by Pingtan. Most merchants want to open their stores on a street corner or close to residential communities. In 2008, some building material stores began to congregate in Xihang Road. But the embryonic form of Pingtan's first building material wholesale market was soon shattered as the increasing rent drove merchants away.

In 2010, three merchants contracted all the stores along Taiyalan Street and rented them to other merchants in this business. But the outcome was unsatisfying as three years on, only 12 of the street's 70 stores are operating in the building materials business.

The high rent kills building material stores downtown. Merchants need to be savvy when it comes to site selection, according to insiders.

"The rent for six months for a 60-square-meter shop in Xihang Street rose from 60,000 yuan ($9,780) in 2009 to 85,000 yuan in 2010 to 160,000 in 2012," said a hardware store owner.

Taiyalan Street, though charging lower rent, has limited space for a market cluster.

"Many of