The "intermediary giant" will take the land to build a house, and the shell wants to grab business with the developer?

Real estate companies are facing a strong competitor.

On the morning of September 20, in Chengdu, the H12 plot of the third phase of Jinjiang District Financial City, which has attracted much attention from the market, quickly attracted 14 developers to participate in the auction, including China Merchants Shekou, Joy City Holdings, OCT, Jinmao Consortium, Greentown China, Xiamen C&D, Guangzhou Yuexiu, Inner Mongolia CIIC, Beihaojia (Chengdu) Real Estate, Jinjiang Tongjian and other enterprises.

In the end, after 82 rounds of fierce bidding on the spot, Bei Haojia (Chengdu) Real Estate Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Bei Haojia Real Estate") won the bid with 1.076 billion yuan, with a premium rate of 42% and a floor price of 27,300 yuan per square meter, refreshing the record of the highest unit price of land in Chengdu in one fell swoop and becoming the "new land king" of unit price. According to the monitoring data of the agency, the previous unit price of Chengdu "Diwang" was the Linjiaba plot in Jinjiang District, which was traded in April this year, which was won by Jinmao with a floor price of 24,500 yuan / square meter.

What is the origin of Bei Haojia Real Estate, which overpowers more than 10 central enterprises and state-owned enterprises?

According to industrial and commercial information, the major shareholder behind Beihaojia Real Estate is Beike Group, which is the largest real estate intermediary platform in mainland China, and Beihaojia Real Estate is the development business platform of Beike.

This site will be Shell's first self-managed development.

In fact, in addition to the Chengdu company of Bei Haojia that has just acquired the land, Bei Haojia Real Estate currently has 4 companies in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Xi'an. In March this year, the airport land in Shunyi District, Beijing was transferred, attracting the participation of 36 real estate companies, and Bei Haojia Real Estate made its first low-key appearance. In June, Bei Haojia Real Estate participated in the auction of a plot of land on Hedong Road in Liwan, Guangzhou, but was unsuccessful twice. In July, Bei Haojia Real Estate won two commercial and residential land plots in Xi'an with 134 million yuan, and with the acquisition of land in Chengdu, Bei Haojia Real Estate has successfully picked up land in two provincial capitals with 1.2 billion yuan.

"Beihaojia's actions in the land development market continue to show that Beike is no longer limited to the field of real estate transactions." Some industry insiders said that although Beike has repeatedly denied entering the field of real estate development, its real estate companies frequently participate in land auctions in hot cities, which has explained everything.

Shell's obsession with real estate development

Beike has a strong connection with real estate development, starting with its involvement in the sale of new homes.

With the sudden increase in real estate sales pressure in recent years and the rise of channel providers who take customers as their sales, Beike and its predecessor Lianjia have a pivotal position in the new home sales market because they have enough offline stores and huge transaction data. Before the establishment of Beihaojia Real Estate, the industrial division of Beike had tested the waters to acquire land with real estate companies in the form of guarantees.

In July 2023, Peng Yongdong, Chairman and CEO of Beike, issued an open letter "Over the Second Mountain, Sounding the Assembly Call", announcing the launch of the "One Body and Three Wings" strategic upgrade and corresponding organizational structure adjustments. Among them, "one" refers to the real estate brokerage service business, and the "three wings" have added Bei Haojia real estate on the basis of the original home improvement and Huiju, forming four business lines. The CEO of Beihaojia Real Estate Business Line is Xu Wangang (Forrest Gump), the former COO of Beike.

Xu Wangang is the founder of the Chengdu real estate agency brand "Yicheng Real Estate", and joined Lianjia in 2015 after the strategic merger of Yicheng Company and Lianjia Group, when Xu Wangang was appointed as the general manager of Chengdu Lianjia Real Estate Company. In 2019, he served as the COO of Beike Real Estate, overseeing the operation and management of Beike City, including intra-city brokerage, new housing and franchise business.

According to public information, since the establishment of Beihaojia Real Estate, professional managers of R&D, engineering, finance and other business lines of many well-known real estate companies, including Longfor, Vanke and Gemdale, have joined Beihaojia Real Estate and formed a professional real estate team with a whole system.

From the perspective of model positioning, Beihaojia Real Estate is positioned as a "data-driven residential development service platform", and has established a "1+2 business model" with "C2M (Customer to Manufacturer) product solutions supported by big data" as the core, supplemented by "flexible and diverse capital solutions" and "efficient customer acquisition marketing solutions for online and offline integration". Beihaojia Real Estate has made full use of its existing data advantages of customer needs, as well as the advantages of sufficient cash flow. According to this logic, this is an asset-light platform service model.

In July this year, the land taken by Bei Haojia Real Estate in Xi'an is a multi-party cooperation project under the "1+2 model". It is understood that the project provides C2M product positioning solutions based on big data support, as well as capital and marketing services. At the same time, Greentown Management, as a partner, is responsible for the agency construction service and brand output guarantee.

However, as soon as the land in Chengdu was won in September, Beike announced that the initial positioning of the project is a high-end product, and it is expected that the whole process will be independently operated by the Bei Haojia Real Estate team, and the C2M concept of Bei Haojia Real Estate will be fully reflected in all aspects of land acquisition, positioning, design, and marketing.

Xu Wangang, vice chairman of Beike Group and CEO of Beihaojia Real Estate, also publicly stated that the independent operation of a project does not mean that Beihaojia Real Estate wants to become a real estate developer, and the main purpose is to better verify the implementation ability of Beihaojia Real Estate's C2M product solutions and enhance the trust of partners in the "1+2 business model".

Obviously, Bei Haojia Real Estate wants to use this high-quality land in Chengdu to try to make a theoretical and logical approach to the C2M model of its real estate development.

It is also worth noting that Li Yujiang, the person in charge of Beihaojia Real Estate in Chengdu, used to work in Beike Greater Central and Northern China, and Xu Wangang served as the COO of Beike Greater Central and Northern China. In addition, Xu Wangang once started in Chengdu and has his own unique understanding and resources of the Chengdu market.

"The third phase of the financial city has a natural advantage, and Beike has less competition in terms of capital and sales, especially when the industry is at a low level, it is not a strategic choice for Beike to try a few projects." Some people in the Chengdu real estate industry have said that for Shell, the Chengdu plot has the best opportunity for the right time, place and people.

"The comprehensive quality of the H12 plot determines that the lower limit of the plot to build products is very high, and the question is how to raise the upper limit of Bei Haojia Real Estate." Wu Jiang, president of the Central Plains Real Estate Research Institute, said that to do a good job in a project, design, construction, hard and soft decoration, garden and control and other links need to be controlled, and the project operation is a scientific and rigorous system, which requires the cooperation of all aspects of the process, which is a great test of the professional trading ability of Bei Haojia Real Estate.

The pattern is still to be tested

A complete real estate development chain, including front-end customer research and investment, mid-end operation and construction, and back-end sales. The traditional real estate development model, the front, middle and back often perform their own duties, Bei Haojia Real Estate does the opposite: through the support of Shell's huge transaction library, the customer base, house type, and price are thoroughly explored, and then customized products.

The inversion of the development chain is based on the advantages of Beike - platform, data and marketing channels, which is also the key to the development and growth of Beike's real estate brokerage business: through digital tools, Beike has developed the real estate transaction process from offline to online, optimized and reconstructed the operation process, and realized the professional division of labor.

Today, Beike has copied this methodology from real estate brokerage to real estate development.

With the support of digital tools, Beihaojia Real Estate has insight into and excavated customer needs, formed targeted product solutions such as project positioning, design and development, and then completed the reconstruction of the real estate development process and benefit distribution with capital and marketing empowerment.

However, for the model of "data-driven development and demand reversal products" of Bei Haojia Real Estate, some real estate companies believe that its calculation model is more static simulation reference, and the reversal of the results does not mean that it has always been an established fact, and there are many factors in the process, which are more worthy of attention and consideration.

Judging from the information revealed by the two plots from Xi'an to Chengdu, Bei Haojia Real Estate is trying to have more possibilities from cooperative development to comprehensive operation. But for Bei Haojia Real Estate without development experience, real estate development is not without thresholds, drawing management, cost control, centralized procurement construction, quality standards, each subdivision of development and construction needs corresponding system support, even if the head of the real estate enterprises specializing in engineering, but also face the further test of project quality and cost control.

Based on the project change rate, which is an important assessment item in the cost control of real estate enterprises, under normal circumstances, the project will have an increase in development costs caused by design changes, construction method changes, material replacements, and construction period adjustments. Development companies with high standards and strong management and control often have more solid multi-line operations and the ability to reduce costs and increase efficiency, reduce expenses and maximize profits. For example, the change rate of China Overseas is controlled within 1%, while the ratio of real estate enterprises under a top 15 old construction engineering group in the country is controlled at 5%.

Behind the scissors difference in real estate development costs and profits is the full wrestling of the development and construction strength of real estate enterprises, and this is also the inevitable level of Bei Haojia Real Estate.

Development and construction is only one part of real estate development, and the greater significance of Beihaojia's next land development lies in whether the data of Beike can really drive development and solve the problem of real estate sales.

Data support is crucial. Judging from the listing data of second-hand houses in Beike, most of the second-hand houses were developed earlier. Taking Beijing, the city with the highest market share, as an example, there are currently 143,000 second-hand houses listed by Shell, and only about 84,000 second-hand houses with elevators, and the number of second-hand houses listed has further decreased to 12,000 after 10 years of superimposed buildings. As of the end of August, the transaction of new houses in Beijing this year has already exceeded 20,000 units, and the second-hand housing database has limited support for the development of new houses for Bei Haojia Real Estate. If the new housing transaction is the main database, what is the difference between the development research and judgment of Bei Haojia Real Estate and the current developer?

From the data and customer side to the field of real estate development, this is unprecedented in the real estate market. How to make good use of their own advantages, rather than abusing them, is a topic in front of Bei Haojia Real Estate.

As for whether its independent trading debut and products can be recognized by the market, whether the "C2M product solution" and "1+2 business model" can break through are still to be tested by the market.