Author/Blue Tech

Second-hand housing sales and rental intermediaries, such as Chainjia, and third-party sales companies that help developers sell new homes may face tremendous pressure in the future. This pressure comes from Internet giants entering real estate-related industries one after another.

On September 16, 2020,AlibabaIts shopping platforms, Tmall and Yiju, jointly launched the “Tmall Good House” platform and promised not to make money for at least the next 3 years, and 100% subsidize all income to buyers. In addition, the “Real Estate Transaction Cooperation Mechanism” (ETC) was jointly released, providing four major transaction scenarios for new housing, second-hand housing, special price housing, and auction housing, and carrying various service functions in the online real estate transaction process.

Within a while, the news of “Alibaba selling houses” quickly spread all over the Internet, and even the number of topics of discussion about this news far exceeded the number of other products or technologies released by Alibaba. After all, compared to some novel technologies, “settling down” is the topic that everyone is most concerned about. According to Blue Technology's search, the Tmall Good House platform has already been launched, which means Alibaba is seriously selling houses this time around.

Internet companies that “aggressively preempted” began selling houses

Actually, Alibaba has had a presence in the real estate business for a long time. In 2015, Ali invested in Nestick, a rental platform for German students, and the rental and buying app Home Express Search; in 2016, Ali's second-hand trading platform Xianyu launched a rental business; in 2017, Ali invested in the long-term rental apartment brand Mushroom Rental; in 2018, Invest in EasyHome; in 2019, investEggshell Apartmentto establish a more complete rental system. This year, after the launch of the “Tmall Good House” platform, Alibaba also officially launched an in-depth layout in the real estate sector.

Of course, Alibaba is not the only internet company that has set up in the real estate sector this year.

In May of this year,JingdongThe launch of JD Real Estate's self-operated stores has created a “self-operated” real estate model. It is claimed that sales processes such as viewing, booking, and signing contracts can all be done online; at the beginning of June,Suning TescoAlso withLe JuAn exclusive strategic partnership was reached in the real estate Internet field, and the “Suning Leju” real estate channel was officially launched; in June, ByteDance also launched Happy's “Real Estate Creation Business Growth Plan”; in July, Beijing Dajia Internet Information Technology Co., Ltd., an affiliate of Kuaishou, added a number of trademark information such as “Quick Talk House” and “Kuaishou Home Improvement”. Plus, it has already invested in sharesshellLooking for a roomTencentIt can be said that most of the leading Internet companies have entered the real estate sector one after another.

What are the giants calculating behind the scramble to enter the market?

Although, at present, many internet giants have entered the real estate sector. However, due to the outbreak of the epidemic this year and the successive regulation of macroeconomic policies, today's real estate market is no longer in a golden period. According to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics, the growth rate of real estate investment and sales in China fell cliff-style in the first two months of this year, and the housing price index ended a month-on-month increase of nearly five years in February. Also, in August of this year, according to data from Shell Research Institute, the China Data Real Estate Industry Research Platform, in August 2020, the total number of new housing units sold in the monitored 66 large and medium-sized cities across the country fell 1.2% year on year, down 14.5% month on month, and the transaction area fell 1.3% year on year and 14.6% month on month.

However, in the face of such a decline, why are Internet companies entering the real estate industry one after another?

Actually, although China's real estate market has experienced a golden period of development, the real estate industry is currently in a slump due to restrictions due to various reasons. But even so, as a consumer, there are still many stories to tell about the housing they just needed.

At the end of the day, the real estate sector is asset-heavy, and housing transaction services have always been in the lower reaches of the industrial chain. For companies in the real estate sector, the basis of revenue is how to quickly monetize transactions. However, in today's real estate transactions, whether it's a new home or a second-hand property, there are problems with high marketing costs and difficulties in acquiring customers.

Take the second-hand housing market as an example. As intermediaries, they must go directly back and forth between the buyer and seller frequently, and they must not only take into account the interests of the buyer and seller, but also must prevent various factors such as being banned and the transaction failed. However, in the new housing market, whether it's advertising and marketing or the daily material costs of looking at a house, it is also a huge expense.

At the same time, with the rapid development of the Internet and 5G technology, online house viewing transactions are also gradually being accepted by consumers. According to online data, in 2019, 80 million people viewed houses on Taobao, and 150,000 units were sold online. Online transactions have gradually become a trend. In particular, the outbreak of the epidemic this year has also caused real estate companies that focus on offline transactions to face many objective obstacles. Consumers are also gradually developing the habit of viewing and selling houses online, and this has also brought opportunities to many Internet companies.

Although offline transactions still dominate the real estate transaction process, Internet real estate faces a lot of room for imagination under increasingly advanced Internet technology and changes in consumer attitudes.

Now, with companies such as Alibaba, Suning, JD, and Tencent entering the market, after saving a lot of marketing and labor costs, a price war may ensue. Cultivate the online trading habits of a large number of users through more favorable prices.

Just like the early Didi cars. When user habits have been cultivated, it means that market space has opened up.

This article was originally written by Blue Technology. Without authorization, no website or platform may reprint it, and infringement must be investigated.