The combined value for first-hand and second-hand homes and apartments for rent reached about 10 trillion yuan, plus hundreds of billions of yuan in terms of property transaction commissions and relevant services. O2O has a big room to play in the property market, especially in the information-intensive property agency side, says Essence International.

The development of property e-commerce has gone through four stages, according to the brokerage house’s study. It started in 1999-2008 when the online service was mainly focused on information and advertisement. This was followed in 2008-2012 with the diversity of businesses when various online property websites provided information, marketing activities, advertisement and some degree of online-to-offline activities.

In 2012-June 2014, mobile devices and big data technology started to be involved. From June 2014 up to the present, the sector is integrated with internet finance and O2O services (See table 2).
China’s property sales reached 8.25 trillion yuan in 2013, while the new home sales through e-commerce channel was 300 billion yuan, indicating huge potential in the sector.