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Developer Fantasia moves into holiday rents
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Chinese developer Fantasia Holdings Group has launched a vacation rental business similar to Airbnb Inc in a bid to put to good use the country’s scores of unsold homes.
Fantasia’s Home ENE online platform, launched last month, will rival Tujia, the Chinese home rental firm that this week raised US$300 million from investors including Singapore-based developer CapitaLand Ltd and Hong-Kong’s All-Stars Investment Ltd to expand at home and abroad.
“There are more than 50 million vacant units in urban China, which have become a major source of properties for vacation use,” Fantasia Chairman and Chief Executive Pan Jun said in a statement yesterday.
He cited research by Chinese Internet consultants iResearch, which showed the short-term lease market is set to more than double this year to 10.5 billion yuan (US$1.7 billion).
Unsold apartments are common in many lower-tier Chinese cities, as local governments used land sales and property development to generate growth.
This inventory, however, has weighed on China’s flagging real estate market, which the government is trying to revive in a bid to stem a slowdown in the economy which looks set to post its softest growth this year in a quarter of a century.
David Ji, head of China investment at property firm Knight Frank, said the properties would be ideal for domestic tourists.
“In the future the tourist destinations won’t be just Beijing and Shanghai, there will be new ones in second and third-tier cities, where hospitality facilities are inadequate,” he said.
Richard Ji, a partner at All-Stars Investment which invests in Tujia, said: “China has the world’s largest tourist population ... and most vacant houses, which forms a fertile ground for the house-sharing market.”
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