Juwai IQI Celebrates 1-Year Anniversary of Merger & New End-to-End Real Estate Marketing & Sales Platform

SHANGHAI, China, Aug. 13, 2020 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- One year after Juwai Limited and IQI Global announced on 23 July 2019 that they would merge, the two companies have successfully integrated their businesses and seen growth accelerate as a result of the creation of the multi-channel, end-to-end real estate marketing and sales platform.

Juwai IQI blends the strengths of online classifieds portals with a modern technology powered agent network capable of making Asian buyers into global residents by closing transactions on behalf of developers and landlords. Its core market, Asia, represents approximately half of the global real estate transaction market with structural growth and demand for new project development sales and rentals.

LEADERSHIP QUOTES
Kashif Ansari, Juwai IQI Executive Director said:

"The combined Juwai IQI offers an end-to-end solution to real estate developers, landlords and agents anywhere in the world. We support them across the entire process of marketing and selling property to Asian buyers both domestically and cross-border.

"Our channels for marketing and sales are our classifieds real estate portals, Juwai.com and Juwai.asia, and our network of more than 10,000 agents under the IQI brand. We also take advantage of a selection of other channels, including international and Chinese social media, influencers, events, and our partner network.

"Things have moved so quickly since the merger announcement that it's hard to believe a year has passed. When you look at what we have accomplished, you can see it has been a very productive year."

Juwai IQI Executive Chairman Georg Chmiel said:

"The merger has enabled revenue and cost synergies that allow for smoother operations and more rapid growth across a range of areas. We have better relationships with partners and customers and significantly greater consumer and industry reach.

"The net result is that Juwai IQI after just one year has achieved what neither Juwai Limited nor IQI Global alone could. The company has improved financial and operational performance, revenues, and expense levels. All of that accelerated our path to breakeven.

"From the start, we knew the two companies were a natural fit. Together, we can provide a complete solution to developers and agents, and a much better experience for consumers."

JUWAI IQI FIRST-YEAR ACHIEVEMENTS
Highlights of the year since the announcement include:

• The company rapidly increasing the pace of real estate sales in 2020, despite the global pandemic. Juwai IQI achieved sales of US$660m in the first-half of 2020 in spite of COVID-19, compared to the US$1b that the businesses closed in the full year of 2019. A strong pipeline suggests that growth will accelerate in the second half of 2020 and into 2021.
• Agents are attracted to Juwai IQI. The number of real estate agents working for subsidiary IQI has doubled from 5,000 at the time of the merger announcement to more than 10,000 today. The company agent network has also expanded geographically with the launch of new agent networks in Vietnam and Cambodia and a direct sales team in China.
• Existing agents maintained their productivity levels during the first half of 2020, despite COVID-19 related lockdowns in countries around the world, in large part due to their rapid embrace of technology.
• Juwai IQI has been successful in the expansion of its core customer base, real estate developers, who see the benefits of being a Juwai IQI partner and is now marketing and selling 60% more new global development projects than at the time of the merger.
• With the launch of Juwai.asia in May 2020, the company extended its online reach. The new portal reaches consumers across Asia and complements China-focused Juwai.com. As of July 2020, Asian consumers outside of China already account for 30% of total buying enquiries.
• Consumer reach and engagement has increased by 50%. The number of monthly engaged consumers increased from 4 million to 6 million.
• Audiences for Juwai IQI's live online events have soared in size. The June live event co-hosted with Baidu reached 400,000 viewers. The company has ceased holding its long-running international property expos and replaced them with fully online events and webinars that achieve better outcomes for all parties.
• Behind the scenes, Juwai IQI has completed the complex process of integrating much of its backend services with both Juwai Limited and IQI now fully integrated into IQI's ATLAS platform for real estate agent management, which has long been the technological backbone to IQI's operations.
• Brand equity has substantially increased, with media coverage growing by 28%, from 1,452 media articles globally mentioning Juwai IQI in Q2 2020, vs only 1,132 mentioning either business one year earlier.
• The company has dramatically strengthened its strategic partnerships, forming new partnerships or retaining pre-existing partnerships in 2020 with such leaders as Baidu, the organizers of the 2020 2nd Annual Conference of Global Wealth Finance in Shanghai, Investment Migration Insider, Sina and Sina's overseas real estate channel Xinhaiwai, City Newspaper, Jiemian.com, the Association of Family Offices, and Noah Holdings.
• The company has expanded its product focus to both new and rental property, with a further expansion into mortgages planned for the next 12 months.

ASIAN CONSUMERS LEAD REAL ESTATE DEMAND
Juwai IQI's geographic cover now encompasses the world's most dynamic economies, Greater China, the Indian subcontinent and ASEAN. With roughly half of the global population, the three regions continue to see strong GDP growth relative to the rest of the world. ASEAN in particular benefits from favourable long-term demographics and a growing middle class.

Chinese consumers are leading the demand for global real estate, with buyers in India and the ASEAN countries following. In large part, this activity is driven by rapid growth in high net worth individuals. Asia's relatively strong economic growth made 2019 the first year in which the global population of US$ millionaires exceeded 20 million. The population of ultra high net worth individuals in India, according to forecasts, will climb by 73% by 2025. By 2025, Asia will have passed Europe in total population of ultra high net worth individuals and will trail only North America.

HSBC notes that China will be the first major economy to return to economic growth in 2021, followed by the USA, India, and ASEAN-5. By the first quarter of 2021, China's GDP will be 4% higher than in Q4 2019. At the same time, the GDPs of the USA and the Eurozone will be 5% to 7% smaller than in Q4 2019.

Chinese GDP growth will drop to 1.0% this year before surging to 8.2% in full-year 2021, according to IMF forecasts. In the U.S., the major nation most impacted by the virus, the comparable forecast is much worse, with the economy projected to contract 8.0% in 2020 before returning to 4.5% GDP growth in 2021.

SOURCE Juwai IQI