Shulou(Shulou.com)06/01 Report--

Shell looking for a house has been put on the market again.

On June 16, Interface News reported that Shell Housing search was about to be listed, possibly in Hong Kong or the United States.

This is not the first time it has been rumored, since its inception, the news about the shell looking for a house to be listed on the market has been constantly spread, although each time has been denied by the official, but there are repeated rumors are naturally not groundless.

It is generally believed that 2020 is the key year for the shell to find a house for listing, and the listing time of the agreement between the shell and investors is this year and next year.

From the perspective of the current internal and external environment, listing is only one step away from the door.

Shell search, which was separated from Lianjia in April 2018, was officially established, bearing Lianjia's founder Zuo Hui's dream of Internet real estate at the beginning of its birth.

Although this Internet housing search platform, which covers second-hand housing sales, renting, new home sales, decoration and community services, does not belong to the industry's "first crab" innovation, it has shown backwardness and rapid expansion in two years. Rapid financing has become the key word in the past two years.

Capital has its own logic of choice, but in terms of volume, shell housing is still being questioned: is it worth tens of billions of dollars?

Intermediary and platform

With the blessing of the "platform concept" and the ability to tell Internet stories, it is not surprising that shell housing is favored by capital. After all, there hasn't been a story like a shell looking for a house in the real estate vertical track for a long time.

Lianjia was established in 2001, located in the real estate transaction service platform, covering second-hand housing transactions, leasing, decoration and other aspects.

Whether it is the pre-start-up period or the mature period of the enterprise, founder Zuohui has a long-cherished wish to establish industry rules.

Lianjia is the first real estate brokerage agency in the industry to launch tripartite contracts and transparent transactions. At the same time, he also took the lead in establishing a real estate database and advocated the industry standard of real housing for the first time.

In 2009, Lianjia opened the "Internet", Lianjia net homeopathic establishment, which has become the embryonic form of shell housing in the future.

Lianjia began to launch national mergers and acquisitions in 2014, when Zuohui began to think about the business model of "shell looking for a house." covering the whole country, connecting major real estate agents and empowering real estate brands, Zuohui wants to create an industry public information release platform.

Not only hope to integrate the value-added services in the industrial chain, but also hope to achieve the transformation of the company. Obviously, what Zuohui sees is the "platform opportunity" in the real estate intermediary market.

With the release of the real estate stock, more and more cities have entered the era of stock housing, the second-hand housing market has become the main trading market, the market demand is rising, and the market potential is constantly released.

Different from other industries, the real estate market focuses on assets and offline, but in fact, the information around real estate also affects the transaction to a large extent.

The information needs and transaction experience of buyers and renters need to be integrated in a better way.

Under the high-tech enabling of big data and artificial intelligence, informatization and platform are providing the possibility for the integration and matching of resources.

How much potential will the real estate intermediary platform have?

Not to mention the market, the word "platform" alone is very valuable, and the "platform model" can be called the biggest innovation in the business model in the last two decades.

Far away, Interbrand chooses the "best brands in the world" every year. Of the top 31 companies on the 2019 list, 13 are platform companies, and well-known companies such as facebook, Google and Amazon are on the list.

More recently, Meituan, Taobao and Didi have contracted for Chinese people's catering, clothing and travel, and have become all-powerful in China's Internet market.

What they have in common is that they set up platforms in their respective subdivided areas, facilitate the docking of resources, and build their own ecosystems.

On the other hand, real estate agents do not have a "hard core benchmark" in deconstructing the "housing" of the public housing demand.

Prior to this, the emergence of Anjuke filled the industry gap, but due to the characteristics of the real estate brokerage field: the scale effect is greater than the Internet effect, the development is restricted.

With the acquisition of 58.com, Anjuke gradually became the entrance to the front-end flow, lost verticality and accuracy, and never went deep into this chain.

For Lianjia, who has developed for many years, he has a certain brand foundation and scale effect, coupled with the rich housing resources accumulated after years of development, is it necessary to continue to wait and see in the face of such a cake?

In April 2018, Shell search was officially launched, which broke through the vertical development of Lianjia net housing supply, through platform operation, attracting more intermediary agencies to move in, providing them with information release and transaction channels.

At present, shell housing business, in addition to B-side and C-side platform business, there is also a "old bank" brokerage business.

Through the platform building, shell housing to attract housing, reducing direct competition, to a certain extent, is promoting the industry to gather resources.

Query and development

As of April 2020, Shell search has been stationed in 110 cities across the country, with more than 250 cooperative new brokerage brands, connecting more than 40, 000 brokerage stores and serving more than 370000 brokers.

While the shell is looking for a house to expand rapidly, it also continues to receive olive branches thrown by capital.

In November 2019, Shell completed the D+ round of financing, including Softbank Corp., Tencent, Hillhouse and Sequoia, with a total financing of more than US $2.4 billion.

The market gives two different assessments of such valuations.

Some people think that the valuation of 10 billion US dollars is a bit high.

On the one hand, shell housing is currently in the stage of enterprise innovation, and the size of the platform is general.

On the other hand, the development of shell housing is greatly affected by the policy, and the business risk is not small.

There are also different views that the transaction amount of shell looking for a house has reached the first place in the industry. compared with the same level of players in different industries, the transaction volume is not as good as that of shell looking for a house, but there are many whose valuation is far above that of shell looking for a house.

Whether it is worth this valuation or not will take time and market verification, but capital is "voting with money" to show its attitude.

However, the "sweet cake" in the eyes of the capital is tantamount to the existence of "black-eyed wasps" in the eyes of peers, and the shell looking for a house was once "chased and intercepted" by peers.

And this kind of treatment is much more than "peers despise each other" and "competitors meet with jealousy".

At the beginning of the shell search, Zuohui said bluntly that he hoped to turn the shell into a platform for real estate agents, including Lianjia, to share resources and benefits.

In Zuohui's view, the birth of shell housing is the important task of writing industry rules. He compares shell housing to a "football field" and many real estate agents to players who play football on the field.

"We are making a stadium. We hope to play more and more here, and the rules for playing football are getting better and better. Our interests are actually in the interests of the market. A fair and just agreement and rules maximize the interests of the shell platform. I hope to reach 100 brands in this platform in the future, including one Lianjia and 99 others."

In this regard, Zuohui also showed sincerity, on-line shell, Lianjia brand in the existing city no longer expand.

If you take a closer look at the logic inside, for intermediary enterprises, if you join the shell, all customer resources will be open and transparent, and because Lianjia's shareholder nature of the shell still exists, it is equivalent to that all resources and information will be given to Lianjia free of charge.

For brokers and clients, the game relationship between them becomes a mechanism relationship. Brokers hope that the higher the house price, the higher the commission, while the lower the house price, the lower the commission. The number of commission is determined by the number of seashells. Brokers and clients should abide by the shell rules.

Many players in the industry obviously will not buy it. In their view, Zuohui's approach is a two-way monopoly on both online and offline. "being both an athlete and a referee" violates business ethics and operational logic, and does not wear the high hat of "rule-making". Behavior itself is a test of breaking rules.

I love that Xie Yong, chairman of my family, once pointed out: Lianjia's feelings of making seashells may be right, but it should not be done by trade associations, especially by local trade associations. The characteristics of this platform are: third party, non-profit, non-monopoly, and Lianjia's shell certainly can not do it.

The opposition of fellow players has not stopped.

In June 2018, two months after Shell found a house online, Yao Jinbo, CEO of 58 Group, launched a real estate pledge meeting, which attracted real estate agency brands including I Love my Family, Central Plains Real Estate and 21st Century Real Estate to establish the "Anti-Shell Alliance".

As a result of the boycott of 58 Alliance intermediaries, Shell Housing search will focus on small and medium-sized intermediary institutions, sinking to cities outside the second line.

Aggression and subversion

Sinking and sinking, the combination of shell looking for a house has not been delayed at all. Looking back today, two years later, the emergence of shell looking for a house already has the meaning of "spoiler". It forces real estate agents to stand in line, either join or out, resulting in the separation of the intermediary industry.

At present, the division of the national intermediary market is very clear, shell camp and anti-shell camp.

As analyzed by the official account "pick-up place", over the past two years, shells have been looking for houses to conquer the city and land, holding the banner of "subverting the industry and defining the rules." but what really matters is the capital, which keeps throwing at the capital of the intermediary:

After taking a 10% stake, 21st Century Real Estate joined Shell to find a house.

After taking a 62% stake, Central Real Estate joined the shell to find a house.

Zhengda Real Estate, the head intermediary brand of Shijiazhuang, holds 15% of the shares.

Changchun's head intermediary brand, Youming Home, holds 33% of the shares.

Chengdu's head intermediary brand-Fufang Real Estate, shell looking for a house holding 16.7%

Several companies under the name of Shell search have invested money in hundreds of intermediary companies in major cities across the country.

Shell's intention to find a house has become more and more obvious, becoming the overlord of the industry, obtaining the monopoly of the industry, and being the "Taobao", "Meituan" and "Didi" of the residential field.

Hu Jinghui, the vice president of my family, pointed directly at:

"Today, Shell is an industry leader in service standards, technical capabilities, internal control and many other aspects, but this cannot be the reason and basis for overpricing and crushing competitors.

Once moving towards seeking monopoly, the industry leader will instantly change from the progressive force of the industry to the reactionary force of the industry.

Because it eliminates the diversity and full competition of the industry, deprives C-end and B-end customers of the right to choose, consciously or unconsciously make excess profits through bullying pricing, and eventually lose the momentum of progress, which will be a tragedy for the whole industry. "

When the dragon slayer grows scales, once the oath of "killing", just listen to it.

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