After more than three years of stagnation the United States housing market is picking up again, and agent Sherri Shang's working hours are growing longer as affluent Chinese buyers resume home hunting in Manhattan.
With a growing number of wealthy Chinese back in the market for investment properties and second homes abroad, Shang has resumed working up to 12 hours a day all week without complaint.
Her Chinese customer base means that Shang, the managing director of world sales for the Asian division of Prudential Douglas Elliman Real Estate - the largest real estate agency in New York - must straddle two time zones: New York and China.
'When most people are in bed here, it is morning in China... I have to answer inquiries and do follow-up calls to my clients in different mainland cities and in Hong Kong,' said Shang.
Adding to the workload was the fact that the market was now totally different to what it was like two to three years ago, when the housing bubble burst in the US and sales ground almost to a halt, she said.
Early this year, sales and prices in Manhattan started to pick up despite other cities such as Las Vegas and Miami not yet hitting the bottom.
'Money from China, Russia, the Middle East and South America is returning to New York City's medium- to high-end residential market,' said Shang, who is a classically trained opera singer and a graduate of the Chinese Conservatory of Music in Beijing.