After multiple attempts to acquire land, Beike's real estate business has reached an important milestone.
On September 20th, the H12 plot of Chengdu Financial City Phase III was auctioned, marking the first land supply for the Financial City Phase III after the cancellation of the dual restrictions on land price and housing price. The site attracted 14 real estate companies including Greentown, Jianfa, CMB, Yuexiu, Joy City, OCT, New Green, Beihaojia, and Jinjiang Tongjian to participate in the auction.
After 82 rounds of bidding, Beihaojia (Chengdu) Real Estate Co., Ltd. finally won the H12 plot of the third phase of the Financial City in Jinjiang District, Chengdu, with a total transaction price of 1.076 billion yuan and a floor price of 27300 yuan/square meter, with a premium rate of 42.19%. This is the first time that Beike has harvested land in the Chengdu land auction market, setting a new record for local land prices.
It is worth noting that the entire process of the plot is expected to be independently operated by the Beihaojia team, reflecting Beihaojia's C2M (from consumers to manufacturers) philosophy in all aspects such as land acquisition, positioning, design, and marketing.
Beihaojia is a residential development service platform under Beike Group. Previously, Beike upgraded its corporate strategy to "one body, three wings" and adjusted its organizational structure, establishing four business lines: brokerage, home decoration, Huiju, and Beihaojia. In addition to establishing a dedicated platform, Beike has also recruited management personnel from other real estate companies to develop its real estate business.
The intention of the "largest intermediary" to enter the real estate market is significant, but since the establishment of Beihaojia, its actions have been relatively cautious, mainly focusing on financial investments in some real estate projects. Since the beginning of this year, Beihaojia has started to make efforts in land acquisition, and has "tested the waters" in Beijing and Guangzhou, two major first tier cities, but has not officially acquired land.
On July 30th, two plots of land in Weiyang District, Xi'an City were successfully listed for sale, with a total transaction price of about 134 million yuan. They were acquired by a company under Beihaojia (Xi'an) Real Estate Development Co., Ltd., marking its official acquisition of land in the land auction market.
At that time, Beike stated that Beihaojia's positioning was not traditional real estate development, but a data-driven residential development service platform, mainly providing comprehensive solutions in a "1+2" model for partners such as homeowners and developers. The land acquired in Xi'an was provided for construction by Greentown Management.
This is the second land acquisition in Chengdu, and at the same time, it will be operated independently for the first time, showing that Beike is continuously making efforts to open the house.
The reason for choosing Chengdu is that, on the one hand, the new housing market in Chengdu has emerged as an independent market this year. According to data from CRIC Sichuan, in the first half of the year, the transaction area of residential properties in Chengdu was 6.1 million square meters, ranking first among key cities and surpassing the second place Xi'an by 60%. The high-end market also performed well, with Chengdu being the only representative from the western region among the top ten cities with tens of millions of property transactions in the first half of 2024 according to CRIC statistics.
Focusing on this plot of land, data shows that it is located in the Jinjiang area of the Financial City, with multiple schools, nursing homes, and ecological parks planned nearby. The living environment and supporting facilities are superior, and the project is initially positioned as a high-end product.
The Sichuan branch of Zhongzhi Research Institute stated that the 24 acre plot of land is the second residential land auction after the adjustment of the third phase of the Financial City. The first project of the third phase of the Financial City was a 29 acre "double restricted land" that was sold in June last year, with a floor price of 20700 yuan/square meter and a limited price of 36000 yuan/square meter for clear water houses. It entered the market in the first half of this year as "Financial City Jinchen Mansion", with an average total price of over 10 million yuan per unit, and was quickly sold out in both openings.
The land parcel in this land auction has sufficient scarcity, and it is considered normal in the industry to be sold at a high premium. The above-mentioned research institute stated that the land parcel was sold after the release of the "Chengdu Urban Planning and Management Technical Regulations (2024)" in Chengdu. The project has greater potential for product development and also poses higher challenges to the product strength of the land acquisition enterprises.
Xu Wangang, Vice Chairman of Beike Group and CEO of Beihaojia, stated that independently managing a project does not mean that Beihaojia wants to become a real estate developer. The main purpose is to better verify the implementation ability of C2M product solutions and enhance the trust of partners in the "1+2 business model".
It is reported that since its establishment in July 2023, Beihaojia has formed a diverse team including AI algorithms, data products, and customer research, conducted research and learning on hundreds of real estate projects across the country, clarified its positioning as a "data-driven residential development service platform", and established a "1+2 business model" with "C2M product solutions supported by big data" as the core, supplemented by "flexible and diverse funding solutions" and "efficient customer acquisition marketing solutions integrated online and offline".
Previously, Beike has also stated that traditional developers tend to focus more on land acquisition, project construction, and sales, while Beihaojia's positioning is not traditional real estate development, but a data-driven residential development service platform that uses big data analysis and AI algorithms to mine customer needs, predict the product types and prices that target customers' intentions in advance, as a reference for real estate product positioning, and explore a new model of "determining houses by people, land by houses, and money by houses".
Recently, Beike also disclosed its mid-term performance and second quarter report for 2024, with a net income of 39.7 billion yuan in the first half of 2024, relatively unchanged year-on-year; The net profit was 2.333 billion yuan, and the adjusted net profit was 4.086 billion yuan; Net revenue for the second quarter was 23.37 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 19.95%; Net profit was 1.9 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 46.24%.