Whether it can attract customers with better and more cost-effective services is the real underlying logic of the sustainable development of the real estate agency industry in the future.
The full text is 1415 words, and it takes about 3 minutes to read
Written by Chen Bai (financial commentator) Edited by Ma Xiaolong Proofread by Liu Jun.
Data map. Photo: Xinhua News Agency.
There has been a new change in the world of real estate transactions. According to the Daily Economic News, more and more second-hand home owners have begun to choose to sell their own houses. During this period, on many social platforms, there are more and more owners who choose to sell their houses directly without going through real estate agents. This phenomenon of "landlord direct sales" has aroused market concern.
In the previous era of rapid growth in the real estate market, homeowners' ** and *** belonged to the "scarce resources" that were fought over in the market. People often hear stories that the house is sold before the agent has made an appointment with the owner. Not to mention bargaining, not to mention that no temporary price increase is considered a conscientious owner, not to mention that the owner takes the initiative to post the housing information on the Internet to "ask for attention".
In the past seller's market, because of many reasons such as expectations, buyer competition and cumbersome housing transaction processes, not only did brokers have a strong need for bidding, but also created a mechanism for buying and selling intermediaries to take a certain percentage of the housing transaction as the intermediary fee standard. In the case that a set of real estate starts at a price of one million, many intermediaries also make a lot of money because of the point commission.
If more than ten years ago, intermediaries saw the changes in the market and actively intervened, so that the rental market to a certain extent to achieve "good money drives out bad money", then in the current second-hand housing market, more powerful forces are subverting the previous profit logic of this industry.
As China's economy better moves towards a high-quality development path, real estate is shifting from a seller's market to a buyer's market, and the "barbaric growth era" belonging to intermediaries has officially come to an end.
* It's the best baton. When the first expectation of real estate in some large cities with concentrated populations is no longer as before, coupled with the emergence of more new real estate in various places, the supply and demand structure of the real estate market is undergoing a rapid transformation. This undoubtedly means greater transaction pressure for second-hand housing transactions, and intermediary fees may be the core of this pressure.
Because, for buyers, instead of paying a lot of intermediary fees and going through a complicated transaction process to buy a second-hand house, it is better to simply go directly to the developer to buy a new house. In the case that the market pattern has changed, second-hand housing owners will naturally make rational choices. Promoting houses on social platforms and selling them directly in the east is a typical change in mentality.
More importantly, the existence of intermediaries is essentially to solve the problem of asymmetry of information and trust in the transaction process. But nowadays, social platforms can actually help both sides of the transaction solve these problems.
To solve the information asymmetry as an example, in the case of the continuous improvement of the algorithm of the social platform, after the owner releases the information, the platform is likely to push the information to the target customers, reducing the difficulty of customer acquisition. This is difficult to achieve by the previous "shelf-style" housing agency platform.
From the perspective of trust asymmetry, compared with previous intermediaries, many social platforms also require real-name back-end and even third-party guarantee functions, which further impacts the value of intermediaries.
In the case of great changes in the general environment and the small environment, it is no longer possible for real estate agents to maintain the logic of "lying down and earning" in the past. However, this does not mean that intermediaries are not necessary, and with the continuous introduction of new policies for the property market in various places, property market transactions have also begun to show signs of differentiation.
On the one hand, in order to solve the stock problem, it is worth looking forward to the adjustment of streamlining the second-hand housing transaction process. At the same time, this also puts forward clearer and more refined requirements for the traditional industry of intermediary. Whether we can return to the original logic of the service industry and attract customers with better and more cost-effective services is the real underlying logic of the sustainable development of the intermediary industry in the future.
From this point of view, it is a good thing that the landlord's direct sale makes the real estate agent no longer "lie down and earn". As more and more second-hand home owners choose to sell their own houses on social platforms, intermediaries can be forced to provide better and more cost-effective services. This is particularly necessary at a time when favorable policies for the real estate market are frequently introduced.