Why did the subversion of Internet intermediaries start with renting houses?

Lei Jun's seven-word mantra of Internet innovation: focus, extreme, word of mouth, fast, and the end is the golden word. When a large number of entrepreneurs hold "Let the Bullets Fly" and "Live, die sooner or later; If you die, you will live forever. When the internet is used to sweep and subvert one industry after another, the stubborn fortress of the four major scenes of food, clothing, housing and transportation naturally becomes the ultimate goal.

The reason why the Internet of real estate is so slow is not only because its asset-oriented model is an important pillar of the national economy and people's livelihood, but also because it has formed a mature and stable offline business system. In addition to selling new houses, relying on the traditional intermediary store model, the transaction between stock houses and rental houses has been completed.

Therefore, the breaking of the emerging Internet model mainly focuses on three considerations:

Looking for high-frequency just-needed scenes

The latest market survey shows that in 20 15 years, about 25% of China people need to buy a house, of which 50% seek a more livable environment, and the other 40% pay attention to living space and quality. This is a real demand, but it is extremely difficult for enterprises without sufficient background and resources to grasp it, so the Internet model naturally finds another high-frequency demand-renting a house.

The biggest difference between internet companies and traditional industries is that they have completely different insights into the status quo. According to the 20 14 data released by the same city, 9 100 people in Beijing are looking for overall rental housing and 37,000 people are looking for shared rental housing every day. Behind the massive demand is the inaction of traditional housing agents. The reason is nothing more than that the commission is lower than buying and selling a house, the customer's demand is changeable, and business is not good. For Internet companies, there is demand.

Creating and satisfying demand has always been the specialty of Internet companies. The fatal focus of the traditional one-to-one model of stores and brokers is inefficiency, which makes the average vacancy rate of landlords reach 23 days. The marketing+free +APP+ subsidy model of Internet companies such as Aiwujiwu has natural advantages in quickly gathering customers, and the efficiency naturally crushes traditional intermediaries. Finally, the chain simply stripped off the rental business and started renting a house in Tintin.

Perfection of broker model

2065438+In August 2004, the State Council announced the decision to cancel and adjust a number of administrative examination and approval items, the first of which was real estate agency. The sudden cancellation of the qualification threshold has made it possible for housing agencies to quickly transition to the era of national brokers, making it possible for Internet intermediary houses and brokers to move freely on the platform.

For example, at the beginning of May, Aiwujiwu had 6,000 employees, mainly in Beijing and Shanghai. 1 1 month, the number of employees of Aiwujiwu has exceeded 16000, covering ten cities in China and becoming a large real estate agency group in China. Most love my family teams are made up of brokers. They are attracted by the basic salary of 5000-6000 yuan. They gave up the traditional operation mode of the original death insurance and tried to use the incremental order mode of internet thinking to make profits. For them, this is a brand-new experience, which brings two problems:

1, the broker found that the reduction of commission (love my family, love my family's house is half price in Beijing, Shanghai is even completely free) affected their average income, but the accelerated turnover of housing mobilized the enthusiasm of the owners, and the single quantity did increase. The side effect is that the work intensity is increased and it is impossible to cultivate high-quality customers in depth, and the competition between brokers is becoming increasingly fierce;

2. If the platform lacks a restraint mechanism for brokers, Internet intermediaries will also appear to brush the bill, hide the house, and conceal the commission. Love me, love me, love me, love me, love me, love me, love me, love me, love me, love me, love me, love me, love me, love me, love me, love me. However, considering that Deng Wei, co-founder of Aiwujiwu, has the experience of taking a taxi with Bumblebee, he should have enough experience to deal with it.

Recently, Aiwujiwu completed the E round of financing, with a total amount of 65.438+0.5 billion US dollars. The accumulated financing amount of the company reached $350 million.

From high-frequency scene to high customer unit price

Internet intermediaries and traditional intermediaries have confronted each other on many battlefields, but the platform dispute is the most important. Regardless of whether the single-store coverage area of traditional intermediaries is McDonald's-style real estate business, it is an offline geographical restriction that must be broken for the collection and enjoyment of full-flow demand on the Internet, and what it really strives for is the ability to quickly transform demand.

Judging from the stock market, as of March 20 15, the top three are still chain home, I love my family and wheat fields, and SouFun ranks fourth. Although this is a mouth-watering market, internet intermediaries must first rely on the rental business to break the game. According to the data report released by the same city, in 20 14, the first and second places in China were Beijing and Shanghai respectively. Tenants prefer core areas such as CBD, and 80% of the demand is concentrated in one or two rooms. Their interest in whole rent and sub-rent is not obvious. All this shows that young people who support demand are mainly groups that Internet companies like.

Although the leasing business in first-tier cities has maintained rapid growth, there is limited room for unit rent increase. Fierce impulsive competition forced all players to hand over handcuffs. Some internet intermediaries mainly pay by installments, and some directly pay high rebates. What's more, they are trying to make online direct signing. As for Aiwujiwu, it has received five rounds of financing in more than one year, and its share in Beijing has reached 12%, while in Shanghai, it has controlled more than 90% of the rental and stock housing resources, and the rapid expansion has excited the industry.

In the basic necessities of life, the demand for "housing" is relatively low frequency, but for buying a house, renting a house is an out-and-out "high frequency" business. Internet intermediary companies such as Aiwujiwu immediately bet on the second-hand housing business after building a rental platform and starting to increase the volume, realizing the lane change from "high-frequency scenes to high-customer unit prices". Obviously, everyone has already had such a high-energy warning: once the vertical ecological circle similar to the housing agency has got rid of the original regional human flow ecology, it is completely Internet-based, and the supply and demand are two-way transparent, it can only be that the winner is king and the winner is king, and there are three key fulcrums to complete the closed-loop business of the "air store":

1 quick impulse+avoid brushing.

Free subsidies and star brokers are only the primary competition of Internet intermediaries, which can easily lead to vicious competition similar to Internet tourism. Love me, love my house, it is said that there are 70% houses in Shanghai and 50% houses in Beijing. Last year, 8 transactions per capita were achieved in Shanghai, which really crushed the traditional intermediary in efficiency, but there was no threshold for free. The influx of a large number of homogeneous companies has explained this point, so fighting for efficiency and transformation is the core, and there is no shortcut. You know, Redfin, an American Internet intermediary, is in the base camp.

2 Effective control of service details

The "word of mouth" of traditional intermediaries is well known, but has the Internet intermediary poked this pain point? Have common service defects and risks been avoided? This is the most important thing besides being fast and unbreakable. First of all, fake houses still exist. At this stage, the Internet intermediary is just a platform, and a lot of information is still in the hands of agents who cooperate with it. Secondly, the quality of brokers is not satisfactory, and the bad habits of the traditional intermediary era are lingering. All of these require advanced tools such as Internet-based customer and employee management system, which can be completely solved with the support of big data.

Aiwujiwu has made great efforts to connect online and offline services. The APP supports multiple preset conditions to search for suitable houses, and then the system will automatically dispatch brokers according to your viewing time. This service is full-time, one-stop, accompanied by the broker until the contract is signed. The advantage of this is that Love Me, Love Me, Love Me, control every link of the transaction, and can deal with and solve all kinds of defects in services such as honesty, efficiency and complaints in time.

3 the sustainability of the profit model

Internet intermediaries, like most O2O startups, measure their valuations through GMV, so the confidentiality of running water data is understandable. However, the rental business that holds high the banner of commission-free is absolutely unable to bear the profit expectation, not to mention the competitive products with solid foundation such as Tintin Rental and Safe House. Therefore, the future strategy of internet intermediaries will inevitably follow the footsteps of internet tourism: first, seize the just-needed needs of first-tier cities, and then meet the improved needs. Channels may sink further into second-tier cities, but it is not necessary. Third-and fourth-tier cities with insufficient demand will not consider it at all. In terms of horizontal expansion, the transition from small-scale rental business to more profitable new houses and stock houses is almost inevitable.

Today, there should be no doubt that the real estate industry in China is Internet-based, but people in China are used to seeing major investments, which requires Internet intermediaries to make more efforts in information collection, screening and filtering, as well as undertaking and controlling offline services. In the final analysis, this just war initiated by internet intermediaries to eliminate commissions, fraud and even intermediaries themselves should not be at the expense of zero service.