At 20:00 on July 14th, with the cheers of the on-site staff, Pinduoduo and Haiya Group launched a live-stream for group purchases of real estate in China.
This new type of selling properties has reached a record high sale of 1122 transactions in 24 hours! The success of this event allowed Pinduoduo to realize another successful expansion of its group-buying empire.
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As for the real estate industry, which has not yet emerged from the impact of the coronavirus crisis, such dazzling results also let everyone see another possibility for real estate e-commerce in China.
China’s recent real estate market
The real estate sector in China is a key part of the world’s second-largest economy. Its development has experienced a long-lasting boom over the last decade for several reasons:
- Urbanization (associated with rising demand for houses)
- Upgrading of living standards
- Rising real estate investment due to inflation
- Government stimulation of the housing sector
In 2018, the total market sales of the real estate reached around 15 trillion yuan, accounting for nearly 17 percent of China’s GDP.
Chinese real estate market during the epidemic of 2020
At the moment of the coronavirus epidemic, most industries are suffering in China, and the real estate industry bears the brunt.
Data from the National Bureau of Statistics of China shows that in 2019, property investment — including homes, offices, hotel and retail places — for the first five months of the year, fell 0.3%, far less than in previous months as the economy begins to gradually emerge from its coronavirus shutdown.
According to Reuters, China’s property sales by floor area was down to 9.7% in May, compared with a 2.1% fall in April.
For recovering the Chinese property sales market, the central bank continued injecting liquidity into the Chinese banking system and lowered the guiding benchmark rate. Since March, due to the falling mortgage rates, the Chinese real estate market has seen a rebound.
PDD is not the only platform exploiting live-streaming immovable property selling
Live house selling is not a new thing born under the epidemic. As early as 2016, celebrity’s live-streaming sales were hot for a while in China. But at that time, the property market was on an upward path, and offline housing sales went smoothly. This new type of property selling was just an eye-catching marketing method for developers, and it didn’t matter whether the house could be sold.
The sudden arrival of the epidemic in 2020 has put real estate companies in a situation of suspension their offline sales. In order to cope with the impact of the epidemic, online sales and live-streaming sales have returned to the market.
Since the beginning of April, the live-streaming sales of houses has been increasing, and the number of real estate companies is still going up. It is just at this moment PDD has launched its online real estate group-buying.
PDD’s first try in online real estate succeeded
JD.com and Alibaba staged a two-strong competition in June 2020 in terms of live-stream real estate sales. When everyone thought Pinduoduo was absent, he suddenly popped up.
At 19:30 on July 13, Pinduoduo teamed up with a marketing company and used creative thinking to launch the “Looking for 1,000 Partners for group-buying apartments” campaign.
On the night of the live-stream, driven by the huge profit proposed by Pinduoduo and Haiya Group, the event attracted more than one million onlookers. Only 4 hours after the broadcast, 600 apartments were sold, and at 18:19 on July 14, it was officially announced that a group of more than 1,000 people was formed, and finally ended with a score high number of 1122 apartments sold at 20:00.
Several factors boost this online selling phenomenon
In addition to the epidemic forcing real estate companies to explore online marketing, the current main force of apartment buyers in China is the post-80s and post-90s. They grew up in the mobile-Internet era and are willing to try new things.
Moreover, the social media and e-commerce platforms in China are in heyday, and the VR panoramic house viewing technology is mature. The combined effect of factors has promoted the continuous trend of live-streaming sales in Chinese market.
Advantages of the live-streaming real estate selling
In fact, apartment selling live-streams, as a new decentralized B2C platform for viewing, interacting, subscribing, connect directly to the B-end to C-end. In this model, there are many values.
Firstly, the content is more authentic and reliable. The traditional communication between developers and customers is flat: displays and advertisements, with moderate exaggerations and distorted propaganda. However, live house selling changes the situation. Customers can engage in real-time interactive communication and have a strong sense of participation.
Secondly, the efficiency of house viewings has been greatly improved. With the new experience tools such as VR and video, online viewing of real estate has greatly improved the efficiency and experience of viewing, which saves time and energy compared with offline visiting. “live-streams + online VR” is becoming the first filter before on-site house viewings.
Future prospects for online real property selling
Although as far as the current situation is concerned, online house selling cannot replace offline model, at least the payment of real estate must be completed offline.
The biggest significance at present of property live-streams is to attract traffic. Utilizing the platform’s and KOL & celebrities’ traffic advantage to obtain accurate target audience.
In the long term, the online real estate commerce will gradually penetrate the market, but will not take over completely the offline market mainly for the following reasons:
- Real estate transactions are bulk consumption — star followers ≠ potential buyers.
- Lack of trust in online purchases of bulk commodities.
However, the proportion of online and offline selling of real properties will be re-adjusted. This is also an inevitable trend for e-commerce and estate companies to adopt dual-channel integration in Chinese market.
This model is, in essence, a form of KOL and live-streaming marketing
If you read all this article, you can get a conclusion that in fact the new model of selling real estate is a new application of KOL & live-stream marketing. The only difference is the merchandise in transaction, here it is real property — a special product.
Like all branding in China, the digital marketing is vital. Nowadays, the Chinese are highly connected by the Internet and social media. In return, those social networking, e-commerce platforms bring Chinese people convenience and efficiency.
GMA, an expert in Chinese digital marketing, is always at your service. If you want to know more or you have any questions, we will be so pleased to help you out.
Read more:
- https://ecommercechinaagency.com/chinese-influencers-kols-vs-wanghong/
- https://ecommercechinaagency.com/chinas-school-internet-stars/
- https://ecommercechinaagency.com/market-oversea-real-estate-agency-china/
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