China's home-sharing transactions to reach 50b yuan by 2020: report

BEIJING - China's market for home-sharing services is expanding rapidly, with the transaction volume expected to reach 50 billion yuan ($7.85 billion) by 2020, a report showed.

The number of tenants is likely to exceed 100 million while the number of shared homes will exceed 6 million by 2020, according to a report by the State Information Center (SIC), a State Council think tank.

In 2017, the country's home-sharing market totaled 14.5 billion yuan in transactions, up 70.6 percent year-on-year. Around 7,600 tenants had the option to choose from 3 million shared-homes that are registered on Airbnb-like short-term lodging providers.

Chen Chi, chief executive officer of industry leader Xiaozhu.com, said that there is still ample room for the home-sharing market to develop, and the whole industry needs to work together to improve user experiences.

The growth was supported by a surge in financing. Home-sharing service providers across China received a combined $540 million in financing last year, up 180 percent year-on-year.

Amid government efforts to encourage innovation, China's sharing economy has seen rapid expansion in the past few years.

Transaction volume of the sharing economy reached over 4.92 trillion yuan last year, up 47.2 percent year-on-year, according to a previous report by the SIC and an industrial association.

About 70 million people were employed in the sharing economy in 2017, an increase of 1 million compared with the previous year.

Policies in favor of housing rentals are also contributing to the growth. Real estate investment trusts (REITs), a means of property asset securitization, will be piloted for developers to raise funds, authorities announced in April.