Five Real Estate Trends Revealed in Beike's Financial Report

A financial report is often not just a company’s health check-up but also a thermometer for the industry.

On March 16, Beike released its full-year 2025 performance, with net revenue up 1% to 94.6 billion yuan. The total transaction volume of existing homes declined 4.2% year-over-year, while new home transaction volume fell 8.2%. Of course, there are positive signs as well: second-hand transactions hit a record high, non-property business revenue share soared to 41%, and rental business turned profitable for the first time. In the current deep adjustment of the real estate market, the signals conveyed by this financial report are worth paying attention to.

Compared to the past “launch, sell, scale-up” frenzy, today’s industry seems to be returning to the essence of living—focusing on the issues every household faces: how to upgrade homes, how to rent more hassle-free, how to avoid pitfalls in renovation, and whom to trust among so much information.

Beike co-founder, Chairman, and CEO Peng Yongdong openly stated at the earnings release, “Many changes have occurred in the market over the past year.” Looking at Beike’s seemingly scattered performance changes collectively, five industry trends can actually be anticipated.

By 2025, Beike’s non-property business revenue share will surge to 41%, and the rental business will turn profitable for the first time.

The activity in the housing market is no longer mainly driven by new home “lead-ins”

For a long time, as long as there was sufficient new project supply and aggressive marketing by developers, the housing market would heat up. Now, this logic is changing.

In 2025, Beike’s net income from existing home transactions reached 25.02 billion yuan, down 11.3%. However, the platform’s second-hand transaction volume hit a record high, up 11% year-over-year. Data from various cities after the New Year shows that second-hand homes are beginning to dominate, with Shanghai’s online signing system even experiencing a temporary outage.

This is a milestone turning point. While there are ongoing voices about slowing new development investments, the second-hand market is quietly taking the lead.

This indicates that China’s core cities have completed the shift from an “incremental era” to a “stock era” in real estate. Second-hand homes are no longer just a supplement to new homes but are now on equal footing.

Peng Yongdong also mentioned during the earnings call, “Transaction structures are changing. The proportion of second-hand transactions in the overall real estate market continues to rise. The number of second-hand transactions nationwide has hit a record high.”

This structural shift directly impacts market activity, which is no longer dependent on new project supply but on the efficiency of existing property circulation. For consumers, the demand for upgrading through selling old homes and buying new ones is becoming the main driver of transactions.

From “investment properties” to “quality living homes”

Returning to Beike’s financials, after the structural change in the real estate market, its business landscape is also evolving. Following 2024’s “non-property transaction business” revenue share of 33.8%, in 2025, this share rose to a record 41%. This is the most impressive figure in this report.

Four years ago, Beike was almost entirely dependent on property transactions. Today, over 40% of its revenue comes from renovation, leasing, and home services.

This reflects a profound shift in consumer mindset. As the “housing speculation” policy takes root, consumers are no longer solely satisfied with “owning a home,” but are more willing to pay for “quality renovation” and “long-term rental services.” Peng Yongdong described it as: “The overall demand for better living is quite stable.”

Among these, Beike’s leasing business achieved its first full-year profit, which is particularly noteworthy. By the end of 2025, Beike’s managed property portfolio exceeded 700,000 units, a 62% increase year-over-year, with profit margins rising to 8.6%. This means long-term rental apartments are no longer just “money-burning” scale games but viable business models. Additionally, the home renovation business is also improving in quality, with revenue reaching 15.4 billion yuan and profit margins increasing to 31.4%.

It’s clear that a new narrative in real estate is emerging—from “buying a home” to “living well,” with home renovation and leasing becoming secondary growth drivers. Behind consumers’ willingness to pay for “quality” and “service” lies an industry value shift from short-term transaction matching to long-term residential lifecycle management. Essentially, this is a historic return of real estate from a “financial asset” logic to a “residential service” logic.

Buyers lack information, but more importantly, “security”

Currently, frontline agents report that, faced with overwhelming information overload and high trial-and-error costs, homebuyers often fall into deep decision-making dilemmas. They crave “certainty” in transactions.

“Transaction behaviors are also changing. Real estate information is becoming more abundant, but decision-making is increasingly complex,” Peng Yongdong said. Both buyers and sellers are experiencing longer transaction cycles, higher trial-and-error costs, and greater caution. Real estate transactions used to be “light decision-making,” but now resemble a very cautious family asset reorganization.

This reveals a fundamental shift in service logic. For both buyers and sellers, deciding on a property often involves a financial plan and lifestyle choice for the next five to ten years.

Although the decision-making complexity has increased, the demand for safety, professionalism, transparency, and reliable services from buyers has never changed. Beike advocates a “neutral market view,” acting as a counterbalance to market speculation, providing objective, rational, and comprehensive information and advice. It requires agents to go beyond simple “showings” or “price-talking” roles, helping consumers clarify their options and translating their situations into decision-making questions, offering basis or suggestions.

Despite richer information, real estate transaction decisions are becoming more complex.

From “scale competition” to “per-acre productivity”

In this new normal of decision-making, the growth logic of the residential services industry is also changing.

Over the past two decades, the real estate industry has been accustomed to a “high leverage, high turnover, large scale” growth model. But Beike’s financial report sends a very different signal: “Not just scale.” It pushes the industry to shift from rapid growth to high-quality growth.

Peng Yongdong clearly stated the strategic upgrade: “From a growth model driven by store size and volume, to one driven by efficiency and value creation.” “In the past, we focused on the number of stores, property coverage, and business opportunities; in the future, we will pay more attention to transaction certainty, matching accuracy, and unit economics improvement,” he said.

The 2025 data clearly illustrates this: non-Lianjia agents’ average second-hand transaction volume per person increased by 6%, from less than 2 transactions in 2022 to over 3; professional home renovation project managers handled over 100% more orders per month; asset management managers’ average managed property volume increased by over 40%, all reaching historic highs.

This signifies that unit productivity is becoming the new benchmark—a profound shift in management philosophy. When the market no longer rises unilaterally, scale alone no longer guarantees safety. Only solid unit economics and healthy operational efficiency can help navigate cycles.

AI cannot be ignored, and humans cannot be replaced

Another noteworthy signal in this financial report is AI. In recent years, almost every industry has discussed AI, and real estate is no exception.

In fact, high-quality development in real estate depends on AI support. Digital capabilities and AI application will become core competitive advantages. Currently, AI has been integrated into key processes such as property inspection decisions, pricing support, and leasing management. This is the most promising trend in Beike’s report and the most discussed topic during the earnings presentation.

Faced with the AI wave, many practitioners worry: will humans be replaced? Peng Yongdong’s answer is thought-provoking: “Real estate transactions are not standardized commodity trades; they involve both rational calculations and a lot of emotional judgment. They require data support but also genuine offline experience.” “AI can optimize the rational part to the extreme, while amplifying the value of the emotional part that must be handled by humans. Machines can process data, but true judgment, interpretation, and trust-building—most of the time—still require humans.”

Based on this understanding, Beike has chosen a “human-AI collaboration” approach. In real estate transactions, Beike has established an “AI Studio” system to help agents automatically generate marketing content, provide customer insights, and strategic advice; in leasing, AI participates in property pricing and inventory scheduling, with pilot regions seeing a 13% increase in agent efficiency and a 5.3 percentage point higher success rate for rental pricing compared to manual methods; in home renovation, over 2.5 million users have used Beike’s app and mini-programs to generate over 70 million renovation renderings.

Beike’s core view is “AI cannot be ignored, and humans cannot be replaced.” The platform’s intelligent foundation acts as a “co-pilot,” assisting service providers—automating tedious data processing while keeping humans as the key decision-makers. Machines can calculate probabilities and models, but only humans can provide judgment, explanation, and decision-making, building trust from heart to heart.

This also means that future competition in the real estate service industry will shift from “mass human deployment” to “human-AI collaboration.” Beike aims to “reform training and build a capability system to master new technologies,” helping willing service providers “develop new skills.”

Through this financial report, we see a collective industry transformation—from new homes to second-hand homes, from transactions to services, from scale to efficiency, from experience to AI. Every trend points in the same direction: real estate is shifting from a linear “land acquisition—building—selling” logic to a circular ecosystem of “transactions—leasing—renovation—services.”

Text by Yuan Xiuli
Edited by Yue Caizhou
Proofread by Mu Xiangtong