China’s leading real estate service platform Homelink, or Lianjia, was reported to have secured RMB six billion (USD 926.4 million) in Series B financing led by China Prosperity Capital, with Baidu and Tencent as strategic investors. Homelink is now valued at RMB 33 billion, Sina Tech reported on Wednesday.
AllChinaTech reached out to Homelink, but could not get confirmation. Sina quoted insiders as saying that the funding will be used to help Homelink grab more shares in China’s booming second-hand housing market, which is valued at over RMB 10 trillion. Their source also said Homelink will develop its big data resources and apply them in its real estate business.
Headquartered in Beijing, Homelink expanded its network to large Chinese cities including Shanghai, Guangzhou and Chengdu in 2015 using acquisitions and investments. It now covers 24 cities with 5,000 offline stores and 100,000 agents, achieving an annual GMV of RMB 709 billion.
Homelink’s official data shows that the average price for housing in Beijing in February is RMB 41,867 per square meter, a YoY growth of 20.84%. Yet only 37,899 apartments were sold in three months out of the 84,203 put up for sale.
According to Ba Shusong, the vice director-general of the Research Institute of Finance of the Development Research Center of the State Council, China currently has more than 125 million apartments in stock, and this number is expected to reach 160 million by 2020.
(Top photo from Homelink)