Transforming the Real Estate Industry: How BeGoodHome's C2M Model Reshapes Market Dynamics

For decades, the real estate industry operated on a straightforward equation: secure capital and land, maximize leverage, and prioritize scale. But today’s market has fundamentally shifted. With supply and demand dynamics reversed, the real estate industry now faces a different challenge: how to move from “do we have enough homes?” to “are these homes worth living in?” This transition has forced companies to rethink their entire playbook—and BeGoodHome, a subsidiary of Ke Holdings, is pioneering a new approach.

Proving C2M Viability in a Competitive Real Estate Industry Through Showcase Projects

When BeGoodHome began acquiring residential land in Chengdu and Shanghai over a year ago, skeptics questioned whether an internet platform could successfully pivot into property development. Today, the data speaks for itself. BeChen S1, which launched in late November 2024 in Chengdu’s Financial City, achieved 20 unit sales online within a month and ranks second in cumulative online contracts for high-end properties in the city. Just 2,000 kilometers away in Shanghai, BeLian C1 achieved similar success, ranking third citywide in both contracted area and number of units at launch.

These achievements are particularly remarkable given the timeline. BeChen S1 took 14 months from land acquisition in September 2024 to completion—more than double the traditional “456 rule” that governed high-turnover development. Yet this extended timeline wasn’t a sign of inefficiency. Rather, it reflected a deliberate choice: CEO Xu Wangang and his team prioritized a principle that sounds almost radical in today’s real estate industry: “Quality > Timeline > Cost.”

The numbers reveal the philosophy at work. BeChen S1’s land cost reached 27,300 RMB per square meter, with construction costs exceeding 30,000 RMB per square meter. The final sale price? Nearly at cost—approximately 60,000 RMB per square meter. This wasn’t a business miscalculation; it was intentional. BeGoodHome’s primary goal wasn’t generating development profits but rather validating its consumer-to-market (C2M) model and establishing itself as a trusted partner within the real estate industry.

Breaking Tradition: How Data Insights Drive Product Innovation

The difference between BeGoodHome’s approach and conventional development became apparent during BeChen S1’s design phase. The team discovered that in Chengdu—a city with limited sunlight—over 70% of high-net-worth customers prioritized “ultimate landscape views” over traditional north-south orientation, a discovery that contradicted decades of Chinese real estate industry conventions.

Armed with this insight, the team made a bold decision: they abandoned orthogonal layouts and rotated building angles in 5-degree increments, creating non-orthogonal designs at 30, 40, and 50 degrees. Every unit’s main view now faces the Financial City’s iconic twin towers. This wasn’t mere aesthetics; it was consumer-driven design at scale.

The innovation extended into operational details. After discovering that survey respondents soaked their feet more frequently than they bathed, the team installed dedicated foot-bath facilities in secondary bedrooms for elderly residents. They raised washing machine positions by 67 cm to eliminate bending strain. They redesigned underground garage turning radii and replaced oversized but underutilized clubhouses with practical facilities like negotiation rooms, gyms, and game rooms that residents actually use.

Across BeChen S1, the team documented 108 such “data-driven stories”—each representing the philosophy that the real estate industry should prioritize what customers truly need over what developers traditionally build. Meanwhile, in Shanghai’s BeLian C1, BeGoodHome applied this same principle to the mass market. The project features flexible floor plans where prefabricated partition walls can be added or removed non-destructively, allowing 97, 118, and 139 sqm units to adapt to different life stages. When BeLian C1 launched, customer choices aligned remarkably closely with the original design predictions.

From Self-Managed Projects to Industry Partnership: Maintaining Asset-Light Model

Initially, many assumed BeGoodHome was transforming into a traditional developer. At Ke Holdings’ August 2025 mid-year results meeting, leadership explicitly clarified otherwise: beyond these two model projects, BeGoodHome would not self-manage, develop additional land, or serve as a financial intermediary.

This wasn’t a reversal but a vindication of strategy. The two projects had accomplished their primary purpose—proving the C2M model works and building trust with established developers. Now, BeGoodHome is returning to its core asset-light framework, leveraging self-managed projects as “reference designs” that demonstrate capability without requiring capital-intensive ongoing development.

By November 2025, BeGoodHome had launched partnerships across 17 projects in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Hangzhou, Nanjing, and Chengdu. Partners range from top-tier developers like China Overseas Property, China Merchants Shekou, and PowerChina Real Estate to regional leaders such as Greentown China and Binjiang Group. This diversified partnership network reflects BeGoodHome’s repositioning within the real estate industry—not as a competitor but as a strategic enabler.

The partnership model offers flexibility. BeGoodHome can provide a full suite of four modules—consumer positioning, design, quality control, and marketing—or any subset based on partner needs. Critically, the company now engages early, often before land acquisition decisions are finalized. By discussing project positioning with developers and using data models to evaluate plot value, client fit, and product feasibility, BeGoodHome helps partners make informed land acquisition decisions before capital is committed.

Becoming the Real Estate Industry’s Strategic Partner and Uncertainty Reducer

BeGoodHome validates its C2M model effectiveness through three measurable dimensions. First, it tracks unit-type ratio accuracy—if recommended ratios are sound, different unit sizes should sell at balanced velocities. Second, it develops “price and sales velocity” relationship curves, allowing developers to target either high turnover or premium positioning. Third, it identifies pre-launch “touchpoints”—specific features customers care about—and later verifies whether these truly drive sales conversion.

The results have been compelling. Chang’an Huaxifu, a Beijing partnership with PowerChina Real Estate, sold out all five launches within five months, accumulating 2.034 billion RMB in sales. In Changsha, BeGoodHome’s collaboration with China Merchants Shekou on the “China Merchants Sequence” project achieved nearly 90% sales velocity at launch, ranking first in both units and sales value. The companies subsequently collaborated on Beijing’s Chaotang Lanyue project in the sub-center, where the first launch exceeded 300 units—leading Beijing’s non-price-capped land launches in 2025.

Wu Bin, General Manager of BeGoodHome’s C2M Innovation Center, articulated the core insight: the challenge facing the real estate industry today is often fundamentally a product problem, not just a sales problem. During boom markets, buyers prioritized “getting in” quickly; living experience ranked second. In the current cycle, customers scrutinize actual residential quality and lifestyle fit far more carefully.

Xu Wangang emphasized the magnitude of improvement available: “Even if each enhancement is only 1%, cumulatively it can double the customer experience.” In a real estate industry operating on increasingly thin margins, such compounding improvements translate to significant competitive advantages. With consumer engagement in BeChen S1 reaching one or two orders of magnitude higher than traditional development—through in-depth interviews, community voting, and real-time feedback integration—BeGoodHome has demonstrated that customer-centricity is measurable, scalable, and profitable.

Conclusion: Creating Certainty in the Real Estate Industry’s New Era

Ke Holdings’ journey mirrors the broader transformation within the real estate industry itself. Founded during an era of information scarcity and supply constraints, the company obsessively cataloged properties through its “Building Dictionary.” That same obsession with customer understanding now manifests through C2M—ensuring homes are designed not for abstract buyer profiles but for actual residents’ lives.

As the real estate industry confronts a new coordinate system—one built on customer satisfaction rather than leverage and land acquisition—BeGoodHome offers a model worth examining. While it cannot solve all structural challenges, it demonstrates that even in a contracting market, differentiation through intelligent product design remains viable. By positioning itself as the real estate industry’s strategic partner rather than competitor, BeGoodHome has found both business sustainability and the deeper purpose that complex markets increasingly demand.