Property management should be free in the Internet age

When free becomes a "business card" in the mobile Internet era, when will the terminal entity break the ice of free experience? Which physical industry will be the first to be revolutionized? The answer is not far from us.

The salient features of an industry that is about to be revolutionized are: facing irreconcilable contradictions, services lagging far behind demand, and the old and new iterations driven by technological progress. As major Internet companies are vying to extend their tentacles to households through software and hardware products to gather traffic and create new entrances, traditional property companies have the important role of connecting communities, but their backward business model and irregular industry system have become the biggest stumbling block.

If the urban management and street vendors, developers and demolition households are the two most prominent contradictions at present, the increasingly strong gunpowder smell between the community property management and residents is likely to take over the momentum of the former two. Whether it is a luxury residential area or a low-income area, various rights protection activities and rights protection banners are common. The rapid accumulation of this new contradiction is due to the serious lag of the domestic property management system on the one hand, and the comprehensive awakening of the citizen consciousness of the middle class who owns real estate on the other hand, and there is an urgent need to safeguard their own rights and interests. To put it bluntly, who would be willing to be a "grandson" and look at the "face" after spending millions to buy a house and paying money to support the property company every month!

From occupying mobile phones to entering homes, the integration and erosion of the O2O ecology and business model of community entrances are very likely to promote changes in the ecological structure of the Internet industry in the future. This is probably a strategic location that no Internet giant dares to lose in the future.

However, the residential properties controlled by various developers are fragmented and in urgent need of integration. In addition, after years of irregular operation, many unspoken rules and small interest groups in the property management industry have formed obvious obstacles to the entry of third parties. This is like the pearls hidden in scallops in a seaside farm. They are worthless when they stay in the scallops, but they become hot luxury decorations in the consumer market when the shells are broken and strung together to form a pearl necklace. The property management industry is destined to usher in a revolutionary iteration in which the old model is completely shattered.

The property company will be an Internet company in the future

Just like the disruptive innovation of Internet finance to traditional finance and Xiaomi to the traditional mobile phone industry, the current business model and service level of traditional property companies can no longer meet the requirements of community residents with increasing civic awareness to safeguard their own rights and interests. Many irreconcilable contradictions have accumulated.

In first-tier cities, the property management companies of each community are still mostly appointed by developers. If the owners want to set up a property management committee and fully exercise and participate in the management of their own community, they have to look at the mood of the property management company, or be directly manipulated by the property management company behind the scenes, and the property management committee often becomes a "puppet organization."

In terms of property management model, property management companies rely on collecting property management fees and renting out community properties to survive and make profits. However, property management companies that have nepotistic relationships with developers tend to regard developers as their bread and butter, and are far more responsible to developers than to community owners, so owners do not have a particularly smooth channel to exercise their rights.

No property management company will proactively and transparently disclose the rental income of a community’s own public properties, or share the profits with community owners. There are countless unspoken rules like this.

Even if individual property owners have a strong sense of rights protection and go through great pains to replace the property management company (although there are not many successful cases of this), it is unrealistic to expect the new traditional property management company to provide five-star hotel-style property management services when the gross profit of a single property is low. More often, due to differences in age, life background, etc., it is difficult for most owners to reach a consensus on property management services, which also makes it easy for the enthusiasm of the property management company to be offset by indiscriminate complaints and criticisms, and in the long run, it will fall back into a state of overstaffing. The disharmonious interaction mechanism also makes it difficult for the property management industry to retain high-end talents, falling into a vicious cycle.

This "stereotype" created by traditional business models and industry management systems is more like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for Internet companies.

B2C face-to-face services to mass customers of different types and with different needs are the strengths of Internet companies. So how will a property management company with Internet genes serve community residents?

First, the management and interaction platform will be fully Internet-based and connected to the mobile phones and home computers of each community owner. Security guards, cleaners, plumbers, etc. who are on duty every day and have direct contact with community owners will be matched with exclusive QR codes, and smart hardware with RDIF recognition in the future will be subject to real-time supervision by owners. The owners' positive and negative reviews will serve as a data reference for the monthly assessment of each property staff. "Asking for likes" will also be the normal work of property management personnel in the future.

In terms of service needs, it will also be fully platform-based. All services are connected in real time through the mobile property APP and the smart integrated terminal equipped to each community family. Receiving express delivery, sending children, checking home surveillance videos, ordering meals for delivery, placing orders for delivery at community retail stores, paying property management and water, electricity, gas and electricity bills, ordering housekeeping services, airport pick-up and drop-off, calling special car services, clothes dry cleaning, phone bill recharge, lottery purchases, family financial management, house rental and sale trusteeship, etc. can all be ordered on mobile phones and computer property platforms, and the work progress will be displayed in real time, as well as the property staff and designated suppliers who follow up on the services.

The question is, is this kind of butler-style property service that exceeds that of five-star and current luxury properties expensive? How can ordinary people afford it?

In fact, this kind of property management service provided by Internet companies will not only have lower basic fees, but also many free opportunities and even profits. Behind this is the new business model brought by Internet-based property companies. New property companies no longer rely on the relationship between developers and the government to seek to settle in the community. Service products that exceed expectations will become the killer for competing to settle in and pry open the door to the community. In terms of business model, Internet-based property companies are no longer limited to squeezing out the maximum profit from limited basic property management fees such as cleaning and security, nor will they fatten the pockets of individual management through secret operations of community public property rental income. Maximizing transparency in services and management, doing everything possible to win the trust of community owners, and establishing credibility are the basis for maximizing the business model of Internet-based property management companies.

The new type of property management company is no longer a fragmented business entity, but a resource integrator and efficient manager based on community and resident personal services. Such companies will fully build advertising platforms for community public spaces, residents' mobile phones, computers, and property-to-home smart terminals. Residents can choose to offset part of the property management fee, or even all of the basic property management fee, by accepting advertising information recommendations.

In the future, new property management companies are likely to become the most valuable application distribution platform and have their own app stores. Residents downloading related apps from the app stores and continuously recharging game apps will help property management companies realize new business models. Residents downloading and consuming apps from the app stores will also become a channel for deducting property management fees.

The new property management company will also integrate the services of physical stores within 1 km of the community, and form an alliance with e-commerce and logistics companies to build an independent O2O ecosystem and establish a membership system. If you open an annual card at a dry cleaner, retail store, express company, barber shop, or restaurant on the property management platform, you will also have the opportunity to deduct the property management fee. With the alliance of interests, the property management company is more willing to actively provide a variety of comprehensive services and strive to maximize profits through service quality.

More importantly, the new property management company will be a company that integrates Internet financial services in the future, providing families with a series of financial services such as wealth management, financing, lending, and investment. If you buy a stable wealth management product with an annualized return of 6% from a property management company and reach a certain amount, you can be exempted from property management for the whole year. If the future property management company holds a financial license and can attract deposits, families with deposits of more than 500,000 yuan will not only be exempted from property management fees, but will also enjoy a series of privileged rights and interests of VIP residents in community management and property O2O ecology.

It is really exciting to see all this. Who will run such a powerful property management company and who can do it well? The first ones to bear the brunt are of course the Internet giants who have a keen sense of traffic, ecology, and business models. 360, which started out as a free service, has already taken the lead. After the cornerstone investment in Color Life was listed in Hong Kong, I asked 360 Vice President Shen Haiyin at a media summit why he invested in a property management company? His answer was quite mysterious: "It is unreasonable to charge for property management." The new form of property management company has a high starting point and has very high management and technical requirements for resource integration and operation. Moreover, to revolutionize an industry, it is destined to be a game for the rich and handsome driven by a large amount of venture capital.

The most effective carrier of smart home

This year is the first year of smart home. Google, Apple and Samsung have increased their layout of smart home hardware products and software platforms. Domestic companies such as Haier and Xiaomi have also begun to launch a series of hardware products. JD.com only has software but no hardware. It launched a super APP to reap the benefits and hopes to play the role of "controller" of the living room.

If the mobile Internet can build an ecosystem and revolutionize it with mobile phones and apps, the smart home is much more complicated. First, multiple family members span multiple age groups and have completely different needs for software and hardware; second, gender differences among family members also have completely different preferences for hardware brands and functions. Building a single brand of smart home ecosystem is a difficult thing to coordinate in family purchasing decisions. So in a smart living room where hardware with different functions of multiple brands and multiple closed system platforms coexist, who will be the third party that hardware manufacturers are willing to open up to?

Internet-based property management companies will play a pivotal role in the channel industry chain of smart homes. Future property management will have a large number of intelligent requirements on the hardware side. For example, access cards with storage chips and RDIF will automatically identify the identity of the owner. When entering the community, the community smart door lock will automatically open within a one-meter distance. On-duty security guards will no longer be marked by intercoms, but will be more likely to be large-screen touch-screen smart terminals that integrate smart cameras, GPS positioning, RDIF radio frequency identification, intercoms, alarms and property platform systems, allowing each property management staff member to play an efficient all-rounder in the complex and integrated business services of the future. The street lights in the community will also be intelligent, achieving the best balance between energy saving and lighting...

Smart property and smart home have more matching docking properties. Smart property's more advanced industry demand and leading practice will drive the development of smart home. For the smart hardware industry chain, property, as a third-party channel and the role of community entrance gatekeeper, will also substantially integrate the smart hardware ecosystem of different brands. Smart property integrates the platform system of smart home and will be the real "controller" of the living room of the future community smart home.

From smart small appliances such as smart sockets, smart temperature control, and smart light bulbs to large appliances such as smart TVs, smart air conditioners, and smart home security, the future of smart homes is not just about more convenient control and intelligent sensing. Its real power lies in the more accurate docking and intelligent screening of smart homes based on home big data and external service chains, helping families manage life scenes in the best way.

For example, refrigerators are no longer just tools for freezing and preserving food, but also managers of healthy family recipes and online docking platforms for fresh supermarket delivery. Televisions are platforms that integrate online education, paid home theaters, home entertainment, family games, and remote video greetings between family members. All smart home appliances will be effectively connected together to provide smart sensing feedback based on the living habits of family members. No matter how diverse the development of the smart home ecosystem is, the O2O ecosystem built by smart properties will be an indispensable part.

Community financial traffic entrance

Judging from the rapid rise of Internet finance, the steady progress of interest rate marketization, the breaking of the ice of private banks, the implementation of the deposit guarantee system, and the rapid development of community banks, the current series of vigorous financial reforms have sent a clear signal that financial services will introduce sufficient competition and elimination mechanisms, and the service targets will be fully extended to individual users and small and micro enterprises.

Although the baby-type financial products that broke through the Internet finance pilot have attracted a large number of users and accumulated a large amount of funds through convenient experience, the reality that the average household investment is less than 5,000 yuan and the high liquidity also fully demonstrate that in addition to cultivating users, it is not easy to obtain relatively rich returns from Diaosi Finance in the short term.

Compared with Diaosi finance, community finance based on families is more direct in terms of demand. It covers almost all the current mainstream financial products. From insurance, lending, financial management, savings to venture capital, they are all the main consumer groups. Providing more precise C2B community financial services around the community will not only enable new property companies to expand their service products to the financial market with larger business flows and higher net profits, but the improvement of such service products will also promote the improvement of the overall quality of property management practitioners, thereby driving the improvement of the quality of basic property management services.

The new type of property management company will establish the most intensive connection with community families through many connection points such as the community service online platform, Lingli social platform, O2O ecological service chain, smart home management, etc., and provide community financial services by accumulating credibility through services.

For community banks under major traditional banks that have already extended their tentacles into the community, they can become an important support for property companies to integrate financial service products and provide C2B financial product services and complement each other.

In the future, property company groups themselves may hold corresponding financial services licenses, and cooperate with traditional institutions to launch financial management and investment product services for community residents. They will also serve as integrators of community financial service platforms and may provide more professional 24-hour physical branch service support.

It is conceivable that in the future, the intelligent service hall of the community property will provide professional services at the level of bank branches, and will integrate community bank branches to provide exclusive property-based financial products and financing products. The service time may be increased to 24 hours, and the property financial manager in the community can be on call and provide door-to-door service.

The property online service platform may become an integrated service provider for community financial products for major Internet financial portals, such as the e-commerce traffic portal Yu'ebao, the social traffic portal Licaitong, and the personal financial management traffic portal Suishuiji.

Since 360 ​​is the first to start the free business, other Internet giants will not sit idly by. Driven by business models and capital, there are many possibilities for Internet-based property companies in the future. There is a high probability that they will become the platform-based rich and handsome people who are favored by many. This also echoes Jack Ma's words: "You still have to have dreams, what if they come true?"

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.