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Homelink (New name: Lianjia. Chinese name is 链家地产) is a Chinese real-estate brokerage company founded in 2001. Under the leading and management of Zuo Hui, Chairman of Homelink, it has expanded its operations and market powers over 28 provinces of China through mergers and acquisitions, such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and so on. There are approximately 6,000 brokerage offices and more than 120,000 brokers. The core service of Homelink is brokerage of both newly-built and pre-owned houses.

By the end of 2015, Homelink had accomplished 700 billion Chinese yuan worth of real-estate brokerage transactions in total. In Beijing, it occupied 55-60% real-estate brokerage market. Currently, Homelink has 51 controlling subsidiaries, all related to the real-estate services, such as long-term rental apartment development, real-estate financing or decoration. By 2018, Lianjia' s market value has evolved to 6 billion US dollar.



History
Homelink was registered by Zuo Hui on 2001.11.12and used 16 million Chinese yuan as its registered capital. In the same year on December 2, The first offline brokerage office was opened in "Tianshuiyuan". Two years later, in 2004, Homelink offered the strategy of "Non-price difference" and tried to reduce the price differece between the market price and trading price. Moreover, Homelink also developed its own financial center to operate its equity and built professional teams for warrant and loan services in 2005. In 2006, "Lianjia proposed the concept of "exclusive listing" which owners singularly entrust their property to the company on receiving the promise of a sale within a certain period. If the company fails to deliver the sale within that period, it returns the property to the seller along with the payment of liquidated damages." In addition, because of the perfect technical support, Homelink launched its first online platform-"lianjia.com to provide online services with 3 million daily browses on  April18, 2008.

In October 24, 2014, Homelink stopped the cooperation with "Fang.com" and lost part of real-estate information and resources.But it changed its brand name to "Lianjia" which was a new beginning for Homelink. In the same year, Homelink commenced two financial services. One is the third-party payment business "Lifangtong", which is responsible for fund trusteeship, and the other is a Peer-to-Peer (P2P) financial services "licailianjia". More specificaly, "Lifangtong" has obtained a third-party payment license issued on July 15, 2015. Although it could guarantee the safety of the funds in the process of transactions, many people doubted it. The public focused on the suspected misappropriation of funds and the deregulation of housing funds. In 2015, the cumulative turnover of "licailianjia" reached 13.8 billion Chinese yuan, with approximately 320,000 investors. At the end of 2014, Homelink have merged real-estate intermediaries such as "Yicheng" in Chengdu, "Deyou" in Shanghai, "Yijia" in Beijing and so on to extend its market size. Started from 2016, the aim of Homelink in the next five years was to find more investors and cooperaters, on April 6, Homelink completed 6 billion Chinese yuan external finance, and on July 24, Ray White has signed an agreement to list newly built and pre-owned properties and cooperated its agency services with Homelink. Lianjia will co-list Ray White's Australian and New Zealand properties and upload the housing information in Mandarin on its websites. Moreover, on September of 2017, Homelink signed a strategic investment agreement" with Century 21 which meant that Lianjia hold 10% of fully diluted shares of Century 21. On June 26, 2018, Lianjia signed with Gridsum Holding Inc, the leading provider of cloud-based big-data analytics and artificial intelligence. Gridsum Holding Inc. decided to provide an Marketing Automation to Homelink as its open-listing platforms in the future. The system will be used in Lianjia.com and Ke.com. In the same year,September 5, Tencent decided to invest 1 billion US dollar to Homelink and cooperate with its core business in property brokerage.

Resently, on March 3,2019, because of a dispute between Homelink and its consumer. Beijing Dongcheng District People's Court issued a consumption restriction order to Homelink Real and its chairman - Zuo Hui. But the Spokesman of Homelink said that the law case did not directly related to Homelink and Zuo Hui. Homelink are raise an objection to the Court. In the same month, on March 25, 2019, more than half main investers of Homelink,such as Baidu and Tencent removed their capital from Lianjia to its subsidiary -"Beike".One of the Homelink's manager said that the "Beike" will be used as a listing tool in the future.



Service
Homelink' s core service is brokerage of both newly-built and pre-owned houses and apartments.

In recent years, Homelink launched its online service platform which provides rental information and real-estate brokerage services for its customers. Homelink also has separate service websites for different cities around the world.

Homelink are trying to introduce the high technology into its services, such as the VR, for increasing the user's experience and attracting potential consumers.

Subsidiaries

 * Ziroom
 * Beike (A mobile application for property listings that includes virtual reality property tours)
 * Sanghai lianjia
 * Dingdao lianjia

Competiters
Woaiwojia

58.com

Centaline Property Agency Limited

Reputation
1. To eliminate the widespread effect of "Information Asymmetry", Homelink established its core commitment of --- "真房源” which means the 100% authenticity of housing sources.and information. In 2008, in order to keep the promise which made by Homelink to consumer, it started the system called "Property dictionary" which consisted more than 70 million apartments' information. Homelink's "Property Dictionary " shows the Housing information from many sections, it includes: room number, standard house type map, attribute information, supporting facilities information, historical business data and so on.

2. Homelink utilizes the strategy of "non-price-difference" to acquire competitive advantages and prevent unhealthy competition within the real-estate brokerage industry. Although Homelink charged higher fees than other online competitors, it still have is stable market. --Kosuke Okame (A based business and market research consultant in Shanghai)

3. The quote from Zuo Hui is "We hold the view that there are still magnificent ongoing changes taking place in the entire real estate industry today, and many more investments will be attracted to this industry as well. " 4. During the Cooperation with Ray White, Dan White (The director of Ray White Group) said that the target market of Homelink cover different regions and different groups of customers. In addition, the main direction of Zuo Hui's management is to promote partnership. In the future, industry boundaries will be greatly blurred. The relationship between Homelink and other real-estate brokerage companies should change from competition to cooperation. 

5. The chairman of EdgeVentures has appraised that different from the other real-estate brokerage companies, Homelink wants to do a long-term business and relationship with consumers through a systematic management system rather than a business that pays off in the short run. 

6. Strated from 2014, Homelink frequently franchised and merged other real-estate brokerage company. Li Guoping, the vice president of E-House China (one of the main competitors of Homelink), analysed that the issue of franchise focus on "management on operation" and "capital flow", which may help brokerage companies and brokers to improve their efficiency, but It also generated large cost, and Homelink needs to break the resource barriers. 

7. From the law case which related to Homelink and its chairman Zui Hui on March 3,2019, some of the media thought that there are loopholes and weaknesses in the management of enterprises on the process of serving customers, such as contract and trading process. 

Illegal lending
2016.2, Homelink was accused of suspected concealment of true information, luring and misleading uninformed consumers to buy problem houses. Moreover, Homelink also offered illegal mortgage loans and breaching contracts to unwittening buyers. On Feb. 24, The Consumer Insurance Commission in Shanghai announced two illegal lending cases of Homelink, including illegal sales of mortgage houses. After the supervision, all so-called "financial products" were suspended from February 24 and the funds in P2P platform were supervised by the third party. The manager of Homelink proposed the improvment of the management system and returned all the consumenrs'payment back.

Formaldehyde levels
2017.12.11, some of the "Ziroom" rental houses under Homelink were suspected of exceeding the formaldehyde standard. It caused many tenants felt headaches and coughs. According to the national standard, the maximum indoor formaldehyde concentration is 0.1 mg/m3, but the tests has shown that the indoor formaldehyde concentration in "Ziroom”living room reached1.018 mg/m3. "Ziroom" announced that consumers were able to ask all the rents back or change other services at any time. Alternatively, Ziroom will provide free air purifiers for 90 days.

Financing plan
2018, Homelink planned to raise 2 billion US dollar from Tencent and Warburg Pincus LLC. In May 2018, Tencent decided to bet 1 billion US dollar in the Homelink's financing plan and staked in property brokerage, but Warburg Pincus LLC thought Homelink may be over-valuated. The quit of Warburg Pincus LLC led a lack of capital inflow. At last, Baidu, Tencent and anther 12 investers signed the agreement with Homelink and announsed to join the finacing plan. For keeping the stable and enough capital flow, all the mergers and acquisitions are paid by the share of Homelink. 

The moving of investment
In 2016, during the B-round financing, Zuo Hui signed a bet agreement with investors. Homelink promised that if the company failed to complete the IPO within 5 years after the delivery date, the investors had the right to repurchase at any time. The repurchase price is the basic investment price plus the return of 8% (single interest) per year. As time approaching to the declared deadline, the pressure of IPO is also one of the reasons why Zuo Hui is so eager to let the Beike (the subsidiary of Homelink) be listed as soon as possible. 2019.3.25, 22 major investors transferred their investment from Homelink to Beike, Homelink's equity reduced from 20.5402 million Chinese yuan to 13.5582 million Chinese yuan and total registered capital decreased by 33.99%. These are all preparing for the listing process.

Achievements

 * Top 100 Real Estate Brokers in China
 * Beijing Consumer Association "Honesty Service Unit"
 * Top Ten Brand Institution Awards for Real Estate Brokerage Industry
 * 3.15 Honesty Alliance Real Estate Agency
 * Grade I Qualifications of Intermediary Service Institutions for Stock Housing in Beijing
 * Annual Excellent Brand-name of China Real Estate Brokers Agency Award
 * Membership of China Real Estate Association
 * Top Ten Intermediary Strategic Partners of Bank of China
 * Vice President Firm of Beijing Real Estate Agency Association

Challenge, problem and chance
"Significant opportunities lie within the market of developing more cost-efficient residential homes based on the booming trend of mobile internet."

In Zuo Hui's speech on April 20,2018, the 4 changes which were brought by both enternal and external environment are shown below:

1. Changes in housing prices

During the past 10 years, the housing prices has increased substantially in China. Especially in Beijing, the housing prices increased about 500% due to China's rapid economic growth.

2. Changes in demographic structure and densification

The entire industry faces the problem of aging population and densification.

3. The online trend in the real-estate brokerage industry

Changes of citizen's consumption pattern led Homelink developed its market strategy.

4. Operating and plannng public spaces

According the Zuo Hui's speech: "Two core factors would determine if a public space is being successfully operated. One being the operating public space itself, and the other being the management of its members." This is also the future direction of Homelink.

Moreover, under the background of the current Chinese real estate market, some of the experts and some authoritative people also discuss the problem and chance for Homelink:

The off-line brokerage offices brought Homelink large competitive market advantage in the past several years, but after the development of their online platform, such as Ziroom, the competitive advantages has not been effectively than before. For the online platform, the consumers' lack of flow is a major challenge for Homelink. At the beginning of 2018, Beike (the subsidiary of Homelink) focused on online and offline promotion. It recruited a number of senior executives in its Internet department and enhanced on online promotion. For example, The company required brokers to promote APP to customers.