Alibaba Group-owned Taobao Marketplace, China’s largest shopping website, is expanding its presence in online real estate marketing through a program with the Yu’e Bao investment platform that allows homebuyers to place deposits on planned homes yet continue to earn interest on their money while waiting forsales to be completed.
The unusual program covers more than 30 residential developments in eight cities, including Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Tianjin and Hangzhou, according to a Taobao press release. The projects are being constructed by more than 20 Chinese property developers, among them Vanke, Forte, R&F and Dahua.
In China, homebuyers interested in new developments are typically required to reserve homes in advance by handing over to the developer deposits of at least RMB 5,000 ($815)—meaning many buyers don’t have access to part of their savings for several months while waiting to complete deals.
Under the Taobao-Yu’e Bao program, buyers who use their Yu’e Bao accounts to make online deposits of up to RMB 50,000 ($8,155) with participating developers will continue to earn interest on the funds—which stay in their Yu’e Bao accounts—untilsales are finalized. They can even keep interest earned if deals fall through and their deposits are returned.
Yu’e Bao, which is operated by Alibaba-affiliated Zhejiang Ant Small & Micro Financial Services Group, offers several consumer-oriented online financial management tools including a popular money market fund.
In recent months, Yu’e Bao has added pre-order services similar to the one now available for real estate allowing buyers of cars and travel packages to earn interest on purchase deposits.
Meanwhile, Taobao Marketplace has been increasing its ties to property companies to help them promote their developments via the Internet, at a time when China’s once red-hot property market has been cooling off. Taobao’s real-estate channel in August held a promotion with Vanke, China’s largest real-estate developer, offering discounts to home buyers tied to the amount of money they spent online over the past year.
