At the end of 2017, Zhu Rongbin, then co-president and executive director of Country Garden, received a salary slip of 21.858 million yuan in annual salary at Country Garden, including a bonus of 19.526 million yuan.
That year was the last carnival before the turnaround in Chinese real estate.
What is surprising is that the annual salary of more than 20 million yuan has not been able to retain Zhu Rongbin. At the end of 2017, Zhu Rongbin left Country Garden and chose to join Sunshine City with an annual salary of 6 million yuan as executive chairman and president.
This move caused a lot of discussion at the time, among which some people analyzed that the "star professional manager" could choose to reduce the salary by 2/3 to "change the owner", in addition to personal reasons, but also out of the expectation of the increasing prosperity of the real estate market.
But zhu Rongbin's step did not seem to bring him a rich return. In January 2022, Zhu Rongbin once again chose to leave Sunshine City. According to statistics, the loss of Sunshine City stocks cashed out before and after leaving the job reached more than 30 million.
Since the second half of 2021, the real estate industry has turned, and the news of the departure of many housing executives in the industry has begun to appear frequently. According to the incomplete statistics of "Phoenix WEEKLY Real Estate", the changes in the personnel of the senior management of housing enterprises in 2021 are about 700-800 person-times, and the changes in the first quarter of 2022 are about 200 person-times.
Different from the real estate of the highlight period, today's executive flow is no longer self-satisfied, but a little more helpless.
Executives "run away" one after another
In November 2021, Lai Guoqiang, president of China who has been with Zhongyuan Real Estate for nearly 30 years, issued a personal statement announcing that he would step down from Zhongyuan China and no longer hold any position.
In the statement, Lai Guoqiang directly expressed his views on the current situation of the industry: "Due to the fact that the long-term mechanism has not yet taken shape, the policy is still unclear, and the new technologies and new models in the industry continue to exist, the development path of large intermediaries has experienced unprecedented chaos. ”
Not only are there "real estate veterans" like Zhu Rongbin and Lai Guoqiang, but also many "young presidents" in this round of executive mobility.
On June 21, 2021, Wu Zhihua, Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer of Greentown Services Post-75, resigned but continued to serve as an executive director. About half a year before that, the president had publicly stated that property management had come to a "prosperous world" of high growth, high valuation, high certainty and favorable policies.
Three days after the news of Wu Zhihua's resignation, Li Heli, 33, executive director and co-ceo of Zhongliang Holdings, also announced his resignation. At that time, the "youngest real estate president" had only been in office for more than a year. Zhongliang replied to Phoenix WEKKLY Real Estate that Li and Li were ready to start a business.
About a month before he left his post, Zhongliang fell into the storm of "overdue commercial tickets". In recent years, the average financing cost of 8% and the debt ratio of 79.9% at the end of 2020 have made Zhongliang face a lot of debt repayment pressure at that time.
Many people believe that this may be one of the reasons for Li and Li's resignation.
According to institutional data, in 2021, the position with the most changes in the number of senior executives in housing enterprises is the position of "president". During the statistical period, there were about 170 changes in the positions of president, vice president, and executive president.
Since the beginning of 2022, Zhuang Qingfeng, vice president of Rongsheng Development, Kan Naigui, executive vice president of Sunshine City, Yu Jian, co-president of Huaxia Happiness, and other real estate presidents have chosen to resign or resign. Soon the news came out that in March, Zhuang Qingfeng assumed the position of president of the Pearl River Investment Real Estate Sector; Kan Naigui chose to join Taihe and will serve as vice president.
Guan Rongxue, an analyst at Zhuge Housing Data Research Center, analyzed "Phoenix WEEKLY Real Estate" and said that the flow of executives in housing enterprises has not decreased in 2022, and the flow scale in the first quarter has increased more than last year, and the heat and attention of executive flow are very clear.
Some insiders analyzed to "Phoenix WEEKLY Real Estate" that the industry is undergoing great changes, the logic of corporate operation and development has been completely changed, sometimes people have a feeling of powerlessness, and it is normal for individuals to choose to leave or temporarily leave the industry in such a context.
Salaries fell the most
"Our industry has developed to this day, there is no bidding ability, we can't give monetary incentives that exceed others, and people who are only motivated by money are not suitable for working in the industry of the black iron age." At Vanke's annual meeting in 2022, Yu Liang, chairman of Vanke's board of directors, said this when mentioning the issue of reward mechanisms.
According to institutional statistics, among the listed companies that announced their financial reports as of the end of March 2022, the salary of executives in the real estate development industry fell the most, with the total annual salary in 2021 decreasing by 1.829 billion yuan compared with the same period in 2020.
Many people in the industry lamented that the compensation of real estate executives in the past two years is no longer what it used to be.
"Phoenix WEEKLY Real Estate" found that in 2020, the executive compensation of real estate enterprises such as Joy City, China Aoyuan, and China Jinmao has dropped significantly, of which Joy City has dropped by nearly 50% year-on-year.
In 2021, the housing enterprises with large executive compensation declines include Vanke, Financial Street, etc., and the year-on-year decline in executive compensation of both companies exceeded 20 million yuan.
As far as Vanke is concerned, Yu Liang's salary in 2021 is 1.547 million yuan, which is only 1/8 of 2020; president Zhu Jiusheng's annual salary is 5.927 million yuan, which is also nearly 50% lower than 11.231 million yuan in 2020.
Gao Liang, chairman of Financial Street Holdings, had an after-tax income of 699,800 yuan last year, a decrease of about 80% compared with the annual salary of 3,832,200 yuan in 2020; and the annual salary of vice chairman Yang Yang was 703,400 yuan, which was nearly 76% lower than the 2,926,500 yuan in 2020.
"Not only is it a salary problem, but the frequency of executive mobility in the real estate industry is different from the previous promotions and job hopping, and many executives have not taken up new positions for a long time after leaving." Some professionals engaged in the headhunting industry told Phoenix WEEKLY Real Estate.
The professional analysis said that because housing enterprises have generally encountered difficulties in the recent past and there are not many opportunities for promotion, many people choose or consider leaving this industry and stepping into other fields or starting their own businesses.
A month after Li and Li resigned, in July 2021, the news in the market was that he was taking Yuanli Real Estate in Suzhou to start a business journey.
According to the data of the enterprise investigation, on March 23 this year, Zhu Rongbin added Rongyu Construction (Guangzhou) Co., Ltd. to his name, and he himself held 100% of the shares. In early April, there was also news in the market that Zhu Rongbin would take over the Agile Clearwater Bay project, but this news was subsequently denied by Agile Group.
Guan Rongxue said that the change of some personnel is a manifestation of the weakening of optimism in the real estate industry or its own enterprises, which may be the main difference from the flow of many housing enterprises before the explosion.
"With the gradual recovery of market confidence, the bullish sentiment of the real estate sector will increase, and it is predicted that the resignation of real estate executives will be reduced in the next step."
Mao Daqing, a former senior vice president who left Vanke in 2015, can be regarded as a star among the star managers in this line.
In 2021, there will be one more "Mao Daqing Bun Shop" in beijing's CBD. Mao Daqing often posts to social platforms, and many people line up to buy buns, and he also makes buns in the back kitchen.
After leaving Vanke, Mao Daqing co-working with the brand "Ucommune Workshop" and successfully landed on the US stock market in November 2020. However, this road did not go well, the stock price continued to fall, and the company's equity was frozen more than 40 times.
In summarizing 2021, Mao Daqing used the word "sleepy". It seems that he is not the only one who is "sleepy".