The new model of second-hand housing in Beijing and Shanghai under the lens of CCTV: when "sincere selling" begins to say goodbye to the tug-of-war over prices.

On September 1, the Financial Channel of the China Central Radio and Television (CCTV) reported on the monthly observation of the real estate market, focusing on a property in Beijing's Huqingjiayuan that had been on the market for over six months. This 105.2 square meter three-bedroom unit was successfully transacted in just three days under KE Holdings, Inc. Sponsored ADR Class A (02423, BEKE.US) in Beijing and Shanghais newly launched second-hand housing transaction model, Sincere Sale, completing the entire process from online bidding to offline signing. This is not an isolated case. At the same time as the report aired, a three-bedroom apartment was sold in Shanghai just one day after the launch of Sincere Sale. In Beijing, this model has achieved over a hundred transactions and expanded from regional pilots to the entire city. When CCTV Finance turned its attention to this "new change" in the Beijing and Shanghai second-hand housing market, it revealed the industrys systematic reflection and process reengineering on a protracted bargaining "stalemate" that had lasted for years. Recently, as Beijing reduced the social insurance period required for non-local families purchasing homes, Shanghai introduced the "Eight Policies," and three ministries jointly issued guidelines to improve the sales system of commercial housing, the policy initiatives have been unusually concentrated and precise, injecting clear signals of market recovery. The emergence of Sincere Sale coincides with this policy window: while policies address the confidence issue of "can we buy," the innovation in transaction models seeks to answer the practical question of how to transact efficiently. The protracted price negotiation is a battle without winners. Theres a huge stake; the seller fears selling at a loss, and the buyer fears buying at a high price. Mr. Guo, a homeowner in Huqingjiayuan, candidly mentioned in an interview, highlighting the core pain point of second-hand housing transactions. In traditional model transactions, buyers and sellers operated as if veiled in a fog. Buyers, concerned about purchasing at a high price, seek to probe and lower offer prices; sellers, worried about undervaluing their assets, staunchly guard their psychological thresholds. Agents merely act as "intermediaries," repeatedly persuading, passing messages back and forth, resulting in a lengthy and uncertain negotiation process. Agent Han Yingyi of Lianjia expressed this experience: Currently, many sellers of properties for sale show a general reluctance to reduce prices, while buyers want to wait and see, making offline negotiations prone to back-and-forth pullbacks. This tug-of-war directly reflects in the transaction cycle. According to data from the China Index Academy, the average transaction cycle for second-hand housing in Beijing in 2025 is 94 days. The lengthy cycle not only drains the energy and patience of buyers and sellers, but also stalls many "selling old and buying new" replacement demands at critical points. Mr. Chen, the owner of the first Sincere Sale transaction in Shanghai, had a three-bedroom apartment that was listed for nearly two months without selling, completely blocking his familys improvement plans at the step of selling the house. The hidden costs of the traditional price negotiation model extend far beyond time consumption. In fact, many transaction deadlocks do not stem from the prices themselves, but from the subtle games of "face" and "trust." After multiple rounds of negotiation, even when the price gap narrows to tens of thousands, neither party is often willing to concede first, fearing that a concession may imply losing or showing weakness. This psychological game, in the absence of anchored rules, easily devolves into a battle of attrition, where the longer the discussion continues, the greater the silent costs incurred, increasing psychological resistance to concessions. Sincere Sale, by establishing clear boundary rules and an online traceable bidding mechanism, transforms the originally vague "face game" into a digitized "rules game," providing a rational outlet for this type of irrational deadlock. How does Sincere Sale tackle the two major challenges of second-hand housing transactions? The mechanism of Sincere Sale is not complex; its core lies in transforming key information previously hidden in agent notes or verbal communications into clear, standardized online processes. Sellers can set a personal minimum price visible only to themselves and a public starting price; buyers must register online and pay a refundable earnest money deposit before bidding, with a maximum of two bids within a specified period. Once a bid reaches or exceeds the seller's minimum, the system automatically locks in the deal, bypassing lengthy bargaining. This design effectively solves two core issues: First, it filters out ineffective information using a security deposit. Both parties must pay a deposit of 50,000 yuan, held by a licensed third-party agency, which can transition to a down payment upon successful completion of a deal; if the deal doesn't happen, the full amount is refunded. This fund serves as an effective screening threshold, keeping those sellers "just looking" and buyers "trying" out of the process, ensuring that both parties entering the process have genuine transaction intentions. Second, it breaks the information gap through transparency. In the past, we relied on agents to communicate back and forth, but Sincere Sale provides complete transparency to both sellers and buyers, said Zhang Jianpeng, customer director of Lianjias Wudaokou district in Beijing, to CCTV Finance. Buyers can clearly see how far their bids are from the minimum price, while sellers can gauge market conditions through real bids, dynamically adjusting their expectations. Mr. Guo, the homeowner in Huqingjiayuan, adjusted his minimum price from 9.9 million yuan to 9.7 million yuan after seeing a buyer's initial bid of 9.65 million yuan, ultimately facilitating a transaction. At a deeper level, the online process of Sincere Sale is reshaping the ownership of pricing power of properties. In the past, neither party had a direct reference for the true market value of properties, but Sincere Sale collects and distills real bid data, allowing each property to receive immediate feedback from the market: how many bids were made, what the bid amounts were, and how far they were from the minimum priceall participants make decisions from the same transparent data pool. Zhang Xian, head of the homeowner service project at KE Holdings, Inc. Sponsored ADR Class A, told CCTV Finance, The buyers' actual bids and their feedback on the property enable sellers to perceive the true market, and theyll adjust their psychological expectations to align with the normal transaction range. This mechanism effectively returns pricing power from agents to the market itself, formed by real bids. From 119 days to 8 days: A leap in efficiency. The increase in efficiency is the most intuitive result of Sincere Sale. Data comparisons are striking. Among the Sincere Sale properties transacted in Beijing, over half had been listed for more than 90 days, with an average listing period of 119 daysmost were properties that were difficult to sell in traditional models. After entering the Sincere Sale process, half of the properties completed the transaction from the payment of the deposit to the signing of the sale contract in an average of just 8 days, with online agreements usually leading to offline signing in less than two hours. The first transaction in Shanghai compressed this cycle to just one day. Mr. Chen's property in Fengxian District was listed on August 29th, and the next day the buyers second bid reached the minimum price, allowing both parties to complete the offline signing that same day. This leap in efficiency, viewed against the backdrop of the overall recovery of the housing markets in Beijing and Shanghai, is even more significant. Data from the Beijing Municipal Housing and Urban-Rural Development Committee shows that in August, the transaction volume of second-hand homes in Beijing has exceeded 13,000 units for six consecutive months, with a year-on-year increase of 4.1%; the data released by the Shanghai Housing Administration on September 1 indicated that after the introduction of the Eight Policies, the daily average transaction volume of second-hand homes increased to 727 units, an increase of 14% compared to before the policy's announcement; data from the Shenzhen Municipal Housing and Urban-Rural Development Bureau indicates that in August, the combined transactions of first and second-hand residential properties in Shenzhen totaled 6,864 units, with a year-on-year increase of 8.5%. Against the backdrop of sustained policy efforts and gradually restored market confidence, the iterative upgrade of transaction tools is timely, addressing not the question of whether anyone is viewing properties, but rather the final mile issue of how to efficiently facilitate transactions after viewings. As policies bring more potential homebuyers into the market, a transaction model that can quickly lock in intentions and shorten transaction cycles has become a key valve for releasing liquidity. The efficiency revolution in second-hand housing transactions has just begun. Zhao Qingxiang, secretary-general of the Beijing Real Estate Brokerage Association, commented on KE Holdings, Inc. Sponsored ADR Class As Sincere Sale: the new model has shifted second-hand housing transactions from forced negotiations in the past to a quick resolution online. This assessment accurately summarizes the fundamental changes brought about by this model, as the logic of transactions transitions from agents acting as intermediaries to the self-operating of the rules themselves. KE Holdings, Inc. Sponsored ADR Class A chairman and CEO Peng Yongdong has also stated that the real estate industry is shifting from finding properties to making judgments, and brokerage services need to upgrade from organizing transactions to supporting housing decisions. The emergence of Sincere Sale is a practical implementation of this concept, replacing suspicion and gamesmanship with rules and transparency, allowing each bid and each minimum price setting from both buyers and sellers to become an honest expression of true intent rather than a disguise for negotiation strategies. Of course, as a budding concept still in the pilot phase, the long-term effects of Sincere Sale and its deeper impact on the role of agents remain to be tested over time. However, it is undeniable that it has validated its feasibility through actual transactions in Beijing and Shanghaifrom being listed for over six months to completing transactions in 8 days, from regional pilot programs to full city rollout, the data speaks, and the market is voting with its feet. As CCTVs camera faithfully captured the completion of the first transaction, and as over a hundred transactions spread from Beijing to Shanghai, the prolonged, complicated game of second-hand housing transactions may be on the cusp of a historical shift from human waves to digital rules. This does not mean that agents will be replaced; on the contrary, their role will evolve into that of professional service providers and process guarantors. As prices become more transparent, genuinely valuable services will return to areas such as property verification, risk assessment, and transaction security. When buyers and sellers can meet openly within a framework of rules, and when real bids replace verbal probing as a gauge of market temperature, the trillion-yuan second-hand housing market may be just turning the page on the first chapter of an efficiency revolution.