China in the headlines
China, China, China… buyers from China have been making the headlines in the local real estate press around the world, in Sydney, New York or Lisbon. For any real estate professional interested in marketing their properties to Chinese buyers, the question is always the same how to market properties to chinese buyers? Let's explore this.
How to market properties to Chinese buyers ?
Marketing real estate listings to Chinese buyers is such an important topic in the United States, Australia or New Zealand that companies such as Waijule(United States), ACproperty.com.au (Australia) or Hougarden (New Zealand) have emerged.
Never heard of them? These are property portals, made for all the people who prefer to browse the internet in mandarin rather than in English. That’s not only the Chinese still based in China, but also the very large community of Chinese that have emigrated overseas. Actually we are speaking about 4 million Chinese immigrants in the USA, 1 million in Australia (see more here). Imagine yourself moving to Shanghai tomorrow.
Do you really think you’re going to search for your flat in Mandarin? Well, it’s the same for them. So here you go, niche market has emerged: property portals made for the Mandarin speakers.
Who are the leading property portals in China?
The leading property portals in China are Fang.com and Anjuke.com, no questions asked. Although Similarweb is not very reliable for Chinese websites, you can still use it to see the estimated 30 million unique users of Fang.com and 20 million unique users of Anjuke.com (see here). What’s more interesting is that internet in China is very much about mobile traffic.
On the smartphones, Anjuke claims to have a clear leadership: “With over 100 million monthly active users, occupying more than 70% share in the housing mobile market of China” says their official presentation. In fact, Anjuke was created in 2007 in Shanghai, grew very fast until they got acquired by WUBA (58.com) in 2015 for USD 267 million.
WUBA (58.com Inc.) is currently valued at USD 12 billion on the Nasdaq, and its 3 biggest components are Anjuke.com (property portal), 58.com (classified website) and Ganji (classified website). Click here to read more on them.
Fang.com (listed on the Nasdaq too) and Anjuke.com are the two brands you can’t ignore if you live in China. Their advertising is everywhere, and they’re the true equivalent of a Zillow or Realestate.com.au, the brands you can’t ignore as the undisputed leaders in their respective countries.
But we know what you may think now: although Fang and Anjuke are the leaders domestically, that doesn’t mean they are the leaders when it comes to a Chinese internet user doing a search for properties in New York, Lisbon or Barcelona. Correct ? Let’s find out together below.
What property portals rank best for Chinese?
Marketing properties to Chinese buyers is not all about the brands. For sure, being on Fang.com and Anjuke.com is already an amazing start. And that’s why at ListGlobally we have signed a deal with both companies: Fang.com in 2013 (click here to see the press release) and Anjuke.com in 2016 (click here to see the press release).
Both deals were made when I was living in Shanghai and focused on Chinese property portals intensively. Indeed, you can’t do a deal in one day with a huge Chinese property portal like these two are. With the help of Esther Yong, Managing Director of ACproperty.com.au (mandarin property portal in Australia), you can see below screenshots of some internet searches in mandarin (Melbourne, Dubai, ). What does that tell us? What websites do we see at the top of the result lists?
Mandarin search for properties for sale in Melbourne
Let’s name them: fang, anjuke, uhouzz, 58.com, acproperty.com.au, juwai, lianjia, beimeigoufang, fang.globevisa.com.cn, glofang and many others.
China and ListGlobally
We know many of those websites because China is a natural focus for us at ListGlobally, as we specialize in international marketing in the real estate sector. The complexity of marketing overseas properties to Chinese buyers is that this market is changing rapidly. New websites pop up now and then, or disappear, while others become strong on some niches.
For example uhouzz is another actor we signed a deal with in 2016 (see here). However, since then it has focused largely on PBSA: property built for student accomodation. They help Chinese students emigrate, and focus on rentals. Now we are focusing our efforts on closing agreements with lianjia as well as 58.com, because we believe these are the two options that would best complement Fang.com and Anjuke.com for our clients. Lianjia used to be a real estate brand, but its website pivoted in early 2018 towards a true property portal, an open platform, which opens possibilities for our clients.
If Chinese buyers is a focus for you, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us to discuss the topic and see how we can help you market your properties to Chinese buyers!
