Mobile phone app challenges Shanghai’s real estate agencies

Global Business

Finding a comfortable and affordable place to live can be quite stressful, navigating through endless house listings, phone calls, and countless viewings. However, the Internet has revolutionized the housing market with strong search engines and databases that can filter housing options in dozens of ways to make house hunting easier.

CCTV’s Lin Nan reported from Shanghai.

Mobile phone app challenges Shanghai's real estate agencies

Finding a comfortable and affordable place to live can be quite stressful, navigating through endless house listings, phone calls, and countless viewings. However, the Internet has revolutionized the housing market with strong search engines and databases that can filter housing options in dozens of ways to make house hunting easier. CCTV’s Lin Nan reported from Shanghai.

After relocating to Shanghai less than a week ago, Liu Yajuan has already found a nice flat in the city center. Although she is not familiar with the city, she said this house hunting experience was much more efficient and easier than previous ones.

What made it different was iwjw, a mobile phone app that collects and publishes rental housing information across Shanghai. Users can filter housing options in dozens of ways and arrange house viewing appointments at the touch of a button.

Previously, house hunters relied on real estate agencies — the gatekeepers to rental housing information on the market. But with new technology, they can now access those choices on a wider scale without visiting multiple agencies.

The Internet has revolutionized the Shanghai housing market with a reliable search engine and database. But before iwjw, house hunting websites or apps were mostly sorted by agencies, which may cause information overlapping and lack of unified management.

Since its launch in July 2014, the app has occupied about 29 percent of the rental housing market in Shanghai in just four months, becoming the top resource in the industry. It currently covers Shanghai and Beijing.

A number of traditional real estate agencies are starting to launch their own websites and apps. Experts said this trend will reshape the housing rental and sales market in the future.