On October 14, it was announced that Xiong Lin would succeed him as chairman. A week later, Xiong Lin held the 10th anniversary of Ziru and the sixth new product launch conference since its establishment, the 2022 New Product Launch Conference, in the century-old building where the Suzhou Creek and the Huangpu River meet in Shanghai.
"At this moment, I would like to thank many people, many people who have given their free help and support, and those who have come all the way and come with ease. But I would also like to ask you on this occasion to join me in thanking someone, mr. Zuo Hui, the founder of Eternity and the honorary chairman of Eternity. Xiong Lin almost choked up at the beginning of the conversation. Ten years of ease, but less testimony of this guide. Xiong Lin wanted to use this conference to start the first act of the new decade.
For xionglin and the industry of ease, living and service technology, a decade of success is worth celebrating. But for the grand issue of urban living, ten years is only the starting point.
From the bottom level, China's real estate has changed from the logic of buying and selling to the logic of stock operation, which is a huge opportunity of the times. In the new era, the operation of living space will become a new theme, and the intelligence brought by technology will become a new kinetic energy.
Observing the new residential service technology enterprises represented by Freedom is essentially thinking: When structural changes occur in the urban residential field, how should commercial forces innovate and respond?
In response to this topic, we invited Xiong Lin, chairman of Ziru, and Zhu Hengyuan, professor of the School of Economics and Management of Tsinghua University, to discuss the new pattern of the residential service industry.
Discussion on "Deconstructing Business Innovation in urban housing"
Chairman Xiong Lin × Zhu Hengyuan, professor of the School of Economics and Management of Tsinghua University
Build a rental model from 0-1
There are many factors driving the change of urban settlement in China, but the core is that the urbanization process has brought about population mobility and consumption upgrading, that is, demand is the underlying driving force behind the change of urban living patterns.
With the blessing of the Internet, the needs of urban residents are not short of attention - in the era of consumer Internet, entrepreneurs are enthusiastically digging into user needs and creating business opportunities.
Judging from the results, a variety of online APP can take a taxi, call takeaway, buy clothes with one click, and in the matter of living, the industry's favorite "bag check-in" is now common. But people ignore that the transformation of the residential industry is far more difficult than the transformation of eating and traveling. Everyone understands that this is not an easy to chew "fat meat", but an extremely difficult bone to gnaw, and CEO Xiong Lin realized this for a long time.
Before its establishment, Xiong Lin, then deputy general manager of The Chain Home, led the team to do a lot of research abroad. The team found that in the process of urbanization in the United States, there have been a large number of specialized rental houses, with rich forms, one-bedroom, two-bedroom, and even large houses. Japan's rental market also has its own characteristics, individuals own land, third-party suppliers are responsible for building houses, and then use leasing to help manage houses after building them
Back in China, we face a completely different situation – the market does not have a mature rental model.
In the past few decades, China has built more than 200 million houses, totaling more than 20 billion square meters, which is a huge volume. But among them, there are no houses dedicated to rental purposes, and the rental listings are almost from the scattered supply of individual owners.
There is a clear information mismatch, product function mismatch, price mismatch, and service mismatch between decentralized and non-standard supply and demand. This is the fundamental reason why renting is most of the time a matter of luck.
During the survey, colleagues after the exchange between the United States and Japan told Xiong Lin that there was almost no solution to this problem in China. In the face of scattered listings, the rental model is extremely difficult to establish, and the management does not have a scale effect.
But the underlying factor driving an industry forward is demand, and the demand for rental housing is enormous. Xiong Lin made a calculation. Of the more than 200 million houses, it is conservatively estimated that at least 30% of the houses are rented. With more than 60 million houses, if the vacancy time of 10 days per year is reduced, how many people can solve the problem of renting? Xiong Lin chose to take the initiative to change.
In the past ten years, we have worked hard to integrate scattered supply one by one, solved the successive difficulties in the process, and finally enabled the clean and quality rental of housing to be realized on a large scale.
Compared with 10 years ago, people's living habits in the city today are very different. Online you can see the real three-dimensional listing information, online signing, no intermediary fees, carrying a bag to move in, but also according to their own needs to choose services - today, renting can be as convenient as booking a hotel, which was unimaginable ten years ago. Behind this is the efforts made by the new residential service technology enterprises represented by Freedom in terms of real housing, rent pricing, online signing, VR and so on.
With the continuous advancement of the digitalization process of the industry, a more intelligent living experience can be expected. Take the simplest lock as an example, from the first smart door lock product industry of Beijing Lingyun Ziruyu nine years ago to the configuration of 1.58 million smart door locks in the country today. Since last year, the number of smart listings has increased by more than 50 times to 580,000, and the number of new smart devices has exceeded 250,000.
Innovative solutions that allow people in cities who can't afford to buy a home will also have a better living experience, a more decent life, and a smarter home in the future.
<h2>Strategy = direction + rhythm</h2>
Ten years ago, the rent for a suite in Beijing was more than 3,000 yuan, which is already the smallest unit that can be rented, but it is still unaffordable for many people.
The traditional second landlord seized on this need, a two-bedroom set, which can be separated by four or five rooms. But a simple cut can only lower the rent threshold, and it does not essentially enhance the living experience.
If we summarize the most core value created for the industry in the past ten years, it should be standardization - product standardization, and service standardization.
Standardized residential products are presented in the form of "long-term rental institutions", bringing real housing information, which was originally the biggest pain point for urban rental youth; institutional pricing is relatively stable, and the standardized service model of professional housekeepers also gives tenants more peace of mind.
Although there are twists and turns in the process of moving forward, the overall results are quite fruitful. In the past 10 years, Ziru has entered 10 cities, managed 1 million listings, and served 500,000 owners and 5 million free customers.
In addition to residential products, the long-term rental industry has also been able to provide services for the first time. According to official data, there are currently 30,000 service providers in the team of Home Service, and 62 million life service orders have been delivered. The flip side of this set of data is the ability to create a large number of service jobs – the value of standardization is multi-directional.
Now, Freedom is trying to further extend the breadth and depth of value creation.
Xiong Lin believes that strategy is always two things, one is the direction, the other is the rhythm. The direction of the long-term rental industry has not changed much in the past few decades, because the urbanization process is still advancing and the demand for rental housing is still booming. But in terms of rhythm, the tenth year, I was free to rethink and take the initiative to change my old model.
In the past three years, a large number of small and medium-sized players in long-term rental apartments have gone bankrupt and run away, and in many "thunderstorms" incidents, tenants and landlords have become victims.
The root cause of these phenomena lies in the limitations of the 1.0 charter model. Decentralized apartment operation threshold is extremely high, in the early stage, mainstream players to take the financing - high-priced charter - rapid expansion of scale - refinancing method, but with the fierce competition, the industry to take the cost of housing rises rapidly, the charter model is difficult to sustain.
This year, we have returned to the essence of supply - on the landlord side, a new housing asset management model "gain rent" has been launched, from "charter" to provide professional asset management services.
For the owner, the "gain rent" has changed the cooperation mechanism, and the housing can be rented, sold, and self-occupied, and can be truly integrated into the system of housing upgrading and rental services. Owners are not only tenants and beneficiaries of housing, but also become real participants in the ecological upgrading of urban rental housing.
"Gain rent" was launched in February this year, and in an interview with the media, Xiong Lin said that such a new model will quickly grow into a new species in the long-term rental industry in the next decade, which shows the determination of the new model.
In addition to decentralizing housing, centralized supply is also changing.
After the 19th National Congress, a number of provinces and cities have successively issued new policies for rental housing from both the supply and demand ends, and it is necessary to increase the supply of rental residential land. Developers have also increased the proportion of self-sustainment, and now these self-sustaining leasing products and collective construction land products will be built into the market in the next few years, and the centralized supply of the long-term rental industry may usher in an outbreak.
In this case, refined asset operation and management capabilities have become a scarce resource. Ten years of polishing, freely precipitating and solidifying the past capabilities, and having the opportunity to create greater value for different types of assets.
In terms of service, Ziru has also thought more. Taking the free home service as an example, the free life service is no longer only a service for the guests, but is open to all urban families, playing a more like the role of an urban family life service expert.
The "Rise of Leasing" report shows that in the future, China will have 300 million rental population, and the rental market will reach 5 trillion yuan. As the age of marriage and the age of home ownership are postponed, more people will have more time to stay in the rental market.
The matter of renting a house, whether horizontal or vertical, has a strong malleability. For other players, including free, while constantly creating value for society, it will also bring huge development opportunities to themselves.
<h2>The next 10 years, go again</h2>
When the innovation of an industry has no experience to learn from, innovation is even more difficult. Internally, the business faces the risk of detours; externally, it also faces the challenge of being questioned.
Housing is a livelihood issue, the population is wide, and the industrial structure is extremely rich. With the expansion of scale, the social responsibility that enterprises need to bear is also increasing.
In Xiong Lin's view, the biggest challenge at present can be summarized as "big, fast and multi-level". In the context of large residence and big consumption, beauty, value, respect, environmental protection, safety, privacy, etc., will be topics that will be amplified and discussed in addition to the residence itself in the future.
In this regard, Ziru has also taken action. For example, at the latest 2022 new product launch, the concept of "living aesthetics" was freely proposed.
At the press conference, Fan Minjun, chief product officer of Ziru, brought new products in three major residential categories to the vast number of urban youth, namely the Mandi series of architectural works, the new products of the Manshe series focusing on high-end custom design in the city, and the quality of the whole rental series of "Heart House" products with aesthetics, functions and space.
Behind these series of products, there is a rethinking of "beauty". At its core, people's needs for accommodation are also changing. Solved from scratch, the next stage is from the good.
Tenants want to live in a more beautiful house without adding too much cost. To meet such a demand, enterprises are required to go deeper.
For example, go deep upstream to study China's largest tile supply chain and plate supply chain - rooted in the industry, with the group's large-scale procurement capabilities, to save the cost of "beauty" in each chain. And aesthetic progress is ultimately also the progress of society.
A company that has lived for 10 years believes that time has soiled its hands and has indeed solved some problems. Although there are still deficiencies, it is not easy to maintain healthy development and maintain the original intention after experiencing the industry storm.
Society should expect that freedom will contribute to the formalization of the industry, and the long-term rental institution industry will return rationality to residence itself. In the next 10 years, the city's beautiful living life will start from ease.