Industry ills to be corrected
"Rent loan" means that long-term rental apartment enterprises take the stability of tenant rent as a bargaining chip and obtain loans from third-party loan platforms to ensure the cash flow source of the platforms. This high-risk business behavior is widespread in the industry. At the end of 20 19, the long-term rental apartment brands Qingke Apartment and Danke Apartment went public in the United States. According to the prospectus of the two companies, "rental loan" is the biggest source of cash flow for the two companies.
In this mode, the tenant is the lender, and paying rent by the tenant is actually equivalent to repaying the loan. Once there is a problem in the operation of the long-term rental apartment platform, it will have a chain reaction, from the loan platform to the tenant and then to the landlord.
Another hidden danger of the long-term rental apartment industry is the operation mode of "high income and low output", that is, taking the house from the landlord at a high price and renting it to the tenant at a relatively low price. Yao Jinbo, CEO of 58 Tongcheng, said that some long-term rental apartment operators have adopted high-risk business models such as "AG low yield" to seize the market, and it is not uncommon for capital chains to break and tenants to be evicted without reason. Some leasing companies hoard a large number of houses, drive up rents and disrupt market order.
Wang Feng, director of the Youth Rights Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Youth League, said that young renters lack experience in dealing with the transaction requirements of leasing companies, such as "long charge and short payment" and "rent loan". Once a dispute occurs, young tenants may face multiple problems such as homelessness, economic loss and credit information damage. He suggested that starting from the aspects of housing supply and demand security, standardizing the market behavior of intermediary platforms, and strengthening industry supervision can effectively solve the pain points of young renters.
Zhu Jiandi, the chief partner of Lixin Certified Public Accountants, believes that "rental loan" should be included in the financial risk supervision system in time, the main body of supervision should be clarified, and the control of the use of funds after lending should be strengthened. Operators should be forced to entrust funds to relevant financial institutions to prevent long-term rental apartment enterprises from using "rental loans" to expand disorderly, curb financial risks, refine the regulatory functions of all parties, and form a joint regulatory force.
Implementing "Lease-Purchase with Right" to Guide the Healthy Development of the Industry
Cultivating and developing the housing rental market at the same time is an important content of deepening the housing system reform. The Central Economic Work Conference in 2020 further clarified that it is necessary to standardize the long-term rental housing market and gradually realize that rental housing enjoys the same rights in enjoying public services. Among them, it emphasizes that the land supply should be tilted to the construction of rental housing, and at the same time, it is proposed to reduce the tax burden of rental housing.
Yao Jinbo believes that there are still significant differences between renters and buyers in enjoying public resources, especially children's education rights and social welfare. In the short term, local governments should focus on protecting the basic rights and interests of renters and strengthen the management of chaos such as "arbitrary rent increase and sudden eviction"; In the medium and long term, according to the complete situation of public facilities, all localities can gradually decouple public services from real estate ownership and promote their direct binding with people, thus narrowing the right gap between rent and purchase, promoting the balance of key public services such as settlement, education and medical care, and realizing the people-oriented allocation of public service resources.
Luo Pinliang, a professor in the Department of Industrial Economics, School of Management, Fudan University, believes that long-term rental apartments, as a platform for connecting housing and tenants, should not be limited to solving information asymmetry or simply providing housing, but should make full use of the network effect, platform effect and locking effect of the platform through strong resource integration ability to meet the diverse needs of users while providing basic services and establish a stable lease cooperation relationship with users.
At the regulatory level, Luo Pinliang suggested strengthening access management, raising the access threshold for long-term rental apartments, and preventing risks from the source. Long-term rental apartments have a variety of operators, including traditional real estate developers, hotel groups, and new entrants such as Internet companies. At present, the entry threshold of the industry is too low, and many operating companies lack certain qualifications and experience, which leads to frequent problems. For the control of business risks, we should start with improving the entry threshold.
Big cities need "little luck"
In terms of increasing supply, some provinces and cities have taken frequent actions and some state-owned enterprises have entered the market. More than 4,000 long-term rental apartments developed and built by Shanghai Chengtou are nearing completion. In addition, many local state-owned enterprises, including Shanghai Real Estate, Shanghai Zhangjiang and Yuexiu Real Estate, have entered the long-term rental apartment industry. Long-term rental apartment projects developed by state-owned enterprises are generally large in scale and high in standard, and will become the stabilizer and ballast stone of the housing rental market.
Many of them are lecturers in a museum in Changning District, Shanghai. Before moving into Chen Fei apartment, she rented in Baoshan District, and it took her about two hours to commute every day. "In 20 15 years, I heard that I could apply for a talent apartment, so I applied here. After a year of waiting, I moved in on 20 16. " Many people can now walk to work for more than ten minutes every day, and their quality of life has been greatly improved.
Chen Fei Apartment is located in Zhao Hua Road, Changning District. This project was originally Le Fei Audio Factory, which was rebuilt on 20 12 and completed on 20 14. At present, there are 229 suites in this long-term rental project. Among them, about 60% are small-sized public rental houses below 30 square meters, and about 20% are 40 square meters and 50 square meters respectively. Wu Shuo, director of the office of Changning Public Rental Housing Operation Co., Ltd., said that the rent of the apartment is about half to two thirds of that of similar houses around.
In Shanghai, similar high-quality long-term rental houses are facing the problem of insufficient supply. About 93% of the 229 apartments in Chen Fei have been rented out, and the housing is tight. New tenants have to wait six months to one year before renting. Apartment in Wu Shuo is the first public rental housing project developed in Changning District, but at the beginning of development, the demand of young people was underestimated. "For example, there are not enough fitness facilities and public activity spaces. Future projects should consider these factors. "