Who are the leading Chinese property portals?

Fang.com(房天下): a leading Chinese property portal

The leading Chinese property portals are Anjuke (安居客) and Fang (房天下). These two property portals are leaders in China, like RightMove and Zoopla are leaders in the United Kingdom. Nobody questions this leadership, and they are hands down the top 2 portals in China.

At ListGlobally, we are very familiar with both, because we signed a deal with Fang (房天下) in 2013, at a time when Fang was still called SouFun, and ListGlobally was still called EdenHome. And Anjuke 3 years later.

Anjuke (安居客): a leading Chinese portal competing with Fang for leadership

However we didn't stop there, and signed another deal, with Anjuke, in 2016 (see article). Indeed, Anjuke (安居客) was purchased by WUBA in 2015 for USD 267 million, and is the rising star in the Chinese property portal industry.

Since then, WUBA (58.com Inc.), a company currently valued at USD 9,55 billion, kept investing in Anjuke to make it a very strong leader. Currently, Anjuke is number 1 on mobile. For more details, check our article from May 2018 (click here).

When I lived in Shanghai (2013 and 2016), I was amazed by the advertising budgets of these two portals. Their brand awareness is probably above 90%, although I couldn't find any official figure to confirm it.  

On what portals do we market properties?

Obviously, we want to maximize the number of leads. In order to do that, we publish properties on several Chinese portals:

• Anjuke (安居客)
• Fang (房天下)
• Sodichan (搜地产)

Sodichan is owned and operated by ListGlobally. Therefore, we invest in traffic acquisition to drive buyers to Sodichan. In particular, we do that if we want more leads than what Anjuke and Fang are delivering to our customers.

How can a Chinese buyer get in touch with a real estate agent overseas?

Whether the Chinese buyer wants to purchase a property in the United States, Dubai or any other country, the process is the same

I'm often asked about the procedure, the user experience that Chinese buyers go through to contact real estate agents. Therefore, I will explain it here, and show screenshots taken from my smartphone to illustrate the UX.

Baidu can be the first step of the buyer's journey... but not necessarily

Yes, Baidu (百度) is the Google of China. However when it comes to real estate search, most buyers will go directly to the mobile applications of Anjuke or Fang. I discussed this with Esther Yong, Director of Sodichan.com and Co-founder of ACproperty.com.au, a prominent expert in property marketing to Chinese buyers.

China is mobile first. Therefore Chinese buyers go to APPs (mobile applications). On this segment, Anjuke registers over 100 million monthly active users, occupying more than 70% share in the real estate mobile market of China.

How does the user journey look, for a Chinese property browsing overseas properties on Anjuke or Fang?

Nothing better than some screenshots with comments, to explain how the UX of a Chinese buyer works.

First, the buyer opens the mobile application of Anjuke. At the top of the screen, 10 main blocks. Overseas Properties used to be the logo of an earth globe. Yet recently, Anjuke's product team changed it and made it an airplane. Why? Because they found out that users were associating Tourism with Property Shopping.

Then the buyer makes a search in a very classic way. However there is one big difference at the end of the funnel. Indeed the lead generation is different.

Chinese buyers do not send emails: they communicate with the real estate agents via WeChat or via telephone, but very rarely send emails!

When the Chinese buyer clicks to get in touch with the real estate agent, he can choose:

• WeChat: by far the most used communication channel by buyers!
• Telephone: 2nd most used
• Email: very uncommon. And in most cases, the buyer does not leave his email adress, as it's not a mandatory field on Anjuke. Only the phone number and message are mandatory.

If the seller agent is Chinese, things will go well because the seller agent will then contact the buyer via WeChat or phone number.

However if the seller agent is not Chinese, transactions never happen. Consequently if you are a real estate agency in an area where Chinese buyers are growing, we strongly recommend you to work with a Chinese affiliate agent.

I hope that this article is useful for your understanding of how to market properties to Chinese buyers!  If you want to read more on Chinese property portals, feel free to consult this article.

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