Closing The Sales Gap: Selling Property To Chinese Consumers? You Need To Read This!

WRITTEN BY

Emerging Communications

LAST UPDATED

Feb 21, 2021


The global pandemic has created great shifts in consumer behaviours across almost every industry, for property marketers however, the change may not be what you expect.

In order to get a real sense of how travel restrictions and economic concerns had impacted on Chinese property spending (rental & purchases), our EC team conducted qualitative and quantitative research and found some interesting findings, which include;

  • There are still many Chinese students relocating to the UK to start their PG/UG studies, as well as a growing number of Chinese White-collar/ Gold-collar expats.
  • Chinese investors see new opportunities within the UK property market post-covid and their confidence in buying cross-border is higher than typical property investors, making them a driving force for international property sales in 2021.
  • As in mainland China, UK-based Chinese consumers are adopting a whole new attitude to ‘home’ and are putting more emphasis on creating a comfortable living and working space.
  • Having hosted one-to-one interviews and focus groups with property buyers and renters we noticed many buyer behaviours can be broken up into just a few customer personas based on their reasons for ‘trading up’ and their priorities for purchase.

And these are just a few of the takeaways we uncovered (many more of which can be found in our webinar in the link below).

Most definitively, our research suggests Chinese students and expats across the UK are ‘trading up’, either by renting bigger and better apartments, taking the plunge and buying their first homes, or investing in more spacious, family-friendly property.

All this is great news for developers and landlords alike. But our market research also uncovered huge lapses in communications between UK property brands and Chinese consumers.

At our workshops and roundtables, we’ve often talked about the need for the Western property market to catch up with Chinese consumers. Now, without the offline touchpoints, property brand owners are left suddenly unable to ‘close the gap’ in their Chinese sales and marketing funnel.

That’s where we can help.

Earlier this month we hosted a property webinar to showcase all the most actionable insights and trends we analysed, as well as best-practice recommendations on how property brands can evolve their Chinese sales strategy for success in 2021 and beyond.

If you missed it, don’t despair! We have an excellent recording where you can benefit from listening to Domenica and Melody not only discuss their findings, but also answer questions from property industry professionals currently facing similar challenges and changes.

If you want to find out what kind of Chinese consumers are most eager to trade up, what they are looking for and how they make their rent and purchasing decisions read our report here.