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The Kuaishou Technology logo and website arranged in Beijing on August 22, 2023. The video-streaming giant has kicked off a new housing shopping festival in the hopes of boost demand in a slumping market. Photo: Bloomberg
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Online housing sales festival kicks off as live-streamer Kuaishou aims to boost demand amid market slump

  • The video streamer launched ‘national home-buying season’ this week with promotions of property in tourist hotspots and bargain prices
  • Kuaishou sold US$1.4 billion in property last year as Chinese consumers become accustomed to viewing and buying homes through live streams
Kuaishou
Coco Feng
Coco Fengin Beijing
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Kuaishou Technology, China’s second-largest short video platform after ByteDance’s Douyin, has launched an “online festival” to encourage home sales amid a deep property market slump in the country.

The one-month campaign, called “national home-buying season”, started on Wednesday and will run through January 5, during which the platform will promote star agents, bargain prices and vouchers to encourage property buying, according to Kuaishou’s Ideal Home channel, its real estate brand established in June 2022.

The platform, which had 386 million daily active users by the end of September, offered users a “housing voucher” of 888 yuan (US$124) and another “settlement voucher” worth 1,888 yuan for those who secure a flat outside their home city, the notice said.

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Kuaishou is promoting some listings in touristic areas, such as a three-bedroom, seaside flat in southern Hainan province for 1.8 million yuan or a smaller one along Kunming’s Dianchi Lake in southwestern Yunnan province for 570,000 yuan.

The promotional event comes as the world’s second-largest economy grapples with weak housing demand amid a slow post-pandemic recovery in consumer spending. Home prices in major Chinese cities fell for the fourth consecutive month in October, recording the steepest drop in nearly nine years, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.

The government has rushed to stimulate demand by issuing new policies, from cutting mortgage rates to lowering thresholds for first-time buyers.

Kuaishou’s interest in the market comes from growth in home-buying online, particularly through live-streaming e-commerce. Many Chinese consumers now watch agents show off houses live and then make a purchase over the internet.

Last year, Kuaishou sold 10 billion yuan worth of property through live-streaming, according to Liu Xiao, head of Ideal Home, who added that it aimed to have 100 agencies on the platform this year.

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In an effort to boost housing supply, the company has also partnered with developers, including Shanghai Forte Land, Nantian Group in Ningbo, eastern Zhejiang province, and Qingfeng Group in southwestern Sichuan province.

TikTok owner ByteDance, Kuaishou’s biggest rival, has also expanded into real estate, but it restructured the unit to focus on online operations. In May this year, the company disposed of its bricks-and-mortar real estate agency.

It has since run the department purely online, experimenting with the new model starting in Sichuan’s capital city Chengdu, which facilitated nearly 500 deals in the third quarter, according to a report by Hongxing News, a news outlet from Chengdu Economic Daily.

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