What does it really mean that Pangdonglai does development
Not long ago, a friend told me that Fat Donglai was also going to acquire land and build buildings on its own. My first reaction was: This timing is quite strange. It doesn't seem like a good time to get involved in real estate these days.
Among real estate developers, private enterprises are cautious, real estate companies are shrinking, and state - owned enterprises are propping up the market. More and more developers are repeatedly emphasizing one thing: First, survive. However, if the protagonist is Fat Donglai, the matter cannot be understood only from the perspective of real estate logic. The most remarkable thing about Fat Donglai over the years has never been just making a supermarket popular. There is no shortage of enterprises that can sell goods and brands that can generate traffic in China. What is truly scarce is that Fat Donglai has turned retail into a way of life order.
Behind all the positive reviews are services, employee benefits, customer trust, and corporate culture. It's a story about how local commerce can serve a city. Many enterprises, not just those in the retail industry, go to Fat Donglai to learn. The core is to learn a business attitude: how to arrange the shelves, how employees should work, how to treat customers, and how an enterprise can make the matter of "operating well" so concrete. Its influence has long gone beyond the shopping mall and begun to spread to the city, employees, lifestyles, and public emotions. So, when Fat Donglai promotes the Dream City project, the situation becomes quite delicate.
Dream City, with an investment of 6.5 billion yuan, zero loans, and self - developed. When Fat Donglai gets into building houses, it may seem like a cross - border move into real estate, but in fact, it is taking its business logic one step further. The core is to retain people - retain customers, employees, and popularity. It's not just Fat Donglai. Gree, BYD, Huawei, and JD.com, which were previously associated with manufacturing, technology, automobiles, and logistics, have recently been frequently linked to talent apartments, employee communities, affordable rental housing, and complex development.
A rather abnormal and absurd scenario has emerged: Those who know real estate best are afraid to touch land, while those who don't rely on real estate for a living are starting to build houses. Does it really confirm the old business saying: What beats you is often not your peers, but an outsider who doesn't play by your rules? However, taking a closer look, we'll find that what really deserves the real estate industry's attention is not that Fat Donglai is also building houses. The key lies in the fact that the chips in the land market have changed, and the underlying model of real estate development is shifting from seeking a large market to serving specific people.
01 From Financial Bidding to Industrial Bargaining: The Transformation of Land Auction Logic
To understand this, we first need to break down the most familiar action in the land auction: raising the sign to bid for land. In the past thirty years, the operation chain of real estate development has been very fast: acquire land, raise funds, develop, sell, collect payments, and then acquire land again. For this process to work, there is a prerequisite: the expectation of rising housing prices must always exist. Based on this, developers dare to bid, banks dare to lend, local governments dare to supply land, and homebuyers dare to enter the market. In good times, this logic is the most efficient. However, as soon as the expectation of rising housing prices fades or even just stops, this accounting doesn't work anymore.
What's even more cruel is that this accounting is not only happening within developers. Cities are also doing the math. After experiencing defaults, construction halts, delays, and rights - protection incidents, many cities have realized one thing: The person who bids the highest may not be the most reliable in fulfilling the project. Being able to acquire the land doesn't necessarily mean being able to complete the building; being able to complete the building doesn't necessarily mean being able to retain people. If a piece of land ends up with construction halts, rights - protection issues, and financial pressure, then the highest bid back then is hard to be seen as the optimal solution. The financial bidding model has failed.
Land still has value, but the logic of inferring today's land price from future housing prices is not as effective as before. When the highest bid no longer equals the most reliable fulfillment, cities will naturally look for another type of partner. How to judge the new partners? The simplest way is to see how much industry and employment they can bring, create continuous tax revenue, and make a district truly function. These things may be more important to a city than an additional 100 million yuan in the total land price. Thus, industrial bargaining has begun.
This also explains why Shanghai took the lead in issuing new land price guidelines at the beginning of this year. The value of Huawei in Songshan Lake cannot be judged just by a few office buildings and some residential land. More importantly, it's about the R & D organization, high - income engineers, the electronic information industry chain, and the resulting consumption, education, transportation, commerce, and urban service needs. What BYD has established in cities like Xi'an, Shenzhen, and Hefei is not just a factory. Behind it is a combination of vehicle manufacturing, supply chain, R & D, employment, and long - term tax revenue. All these show that cities are starting to readjust land rules around industrial populations.
The same goes for Gree's talent apartments in Zhuhai. Gree Group also undertakes the construction of public service supporting projects in Sanxi Science and Technology Innovation City, such as Sanxi Kindergarten, Sanxi Experimental Primary School, and Sanxi Neighborhood Center. Gree's goal is a long - term investment in the stability of talent. For the city, this kind of housing is not just about a one - time land revenue. It is tied to industry, employment, and talent retention.
Understanding these points helps us understand the biggest difference between non - real - estate enterprises and traditional developers: Developers rely on sales for fulfillment, while non - real - estate enterprises rely on industry, organization, and employment for fulfillment; Developers need to find customers in the market, while non - real - estate enterprises already have people in hand; Developers need to prove that the houses can be sold in the future, while non - real - estate enterprises need to prove that the houses can retain people. They are not competing on the same track from the start.
02 When the Land Pricing Logic Changes, the Built - Up Buildings Naturally Change Too
The most difficult part for traditional residential development in the current market is actually uncertainty. When acquiring land, the customers don't exist yet. Developers can only guess who will buy in the future through market research, product positioning, price calculation, and competitor analysis. If they guess right, the project will be a hit; if they guess wrong, inventory, price cuts, channel fees, and promotional battles will follow. The essence of the distortion in this customer research process is that relying on past results to define future customers and products will lead to increasing deviations over time. So, in essence, traditional developers are doing business with uncertainty.
However, the market logic has changed now. A project doesn't have to capture 100% of the market. Sometimes, it's enough if 500 sufficiently certain people like it. As Trout said in "The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing - The Law of Line Extension": "You can't be everything for everybody."
It is precisely the "Fat Donglais" that have completed this transformation first, or even don't need to transform. Non - real - estate enterprises face a different situation: Gree knows who its engineers are, BYD knows where its industrial workers are, Huawei knows what kind of commuting and living conditions its R & D personnel need, and JD.com knows what kind of living radius its young employees, interns, and front - line staff need. Before these enterprises build houses, the people are already there. In other words, the demand is already there, and the pain points are also there.
This has a great impact on traditional developers and is quite eye - opening. If a project still aims to capture 100% of the market, the workload of customer research will increase, and the decision - making difficulty will also rise. If they still choose to cover all social classes and family structures, the customers are getting more and more segmented, and the demands are becoming more and more dispersed. Family structures, payment abilities, commuting radii, emotional preferences, and asset expectations are all different. After spending a lot of cost on questionnaires, in - depth interviews, feedback on model rooms, and competitor reviews, they still often can't figure out what the customers really want. Traditional market research is of course valuable, but there is a natural distance between developers and target users. Customers often don't say much, can't clearly express many of their demands, and many pain points will only be exposed after they actually move in.
However, non - real - estate enterprises face the daily management scene: what time employees get off work, how much the rental cost is, whether the public space is sufficient, and what the family structure is like. This is why the "Fat Donglais" have less guesswork when building houses compared to many developers. They may not know more about real estate, but they know their people better.
Nowadays, the more one adheres to a general statement about prime locations, the more likely they are to miss those truly certain people. Being close to commercial areas, schools, subways, hospitals, and parks is of course valuable. But for some specific groups, a good location has another meaning: an efficient daily life. For engineers, being close to the R & D park is a good location; for industrial workers, being close to the workshop, having low rent, and a stable life is a good location; for store employees, being able to take a ten - minute shuttle bus home after the night shift is a good location. The reason why Zhangjiang has been able to support its residential value in recent years is not just because of the slogan of "a high - tech hub". What really supports it is the real existence of a large number of R & D positions, high - income engineers, and a stable industrial population.
What's more worthy of attention is that work locations are redefining living locations. In the past, prime locations served asset values. Now, for some houses, the prime locations are starting to serve people's daily efficiency.
03 Once the Target Group is Clear, the Product Can't Start from the Value Table
The simplest and clearest way can be to start from the daily life routine. Although many traditional developers have started to emphasize property management, community building, commerce, and operation, it basically remains in the additional value item column of the project. Of course, this is also because there are difficulties in terms of capital and talent in the transformation process.
In contrast, the delivery logic of non - real - estate enterprises when building houses is different. After employees move in, they still belong to a unified organization and face the same familiar people. It sounds familiar, right? It's the same logic as the unit - owned housing in Northeast China 30 years ago. The difference is that the unit - owned housing in the past solved the relationship between the unit, employees, and welfare; today, these enterprises are solving the relationship between industry, employees, and talent retention in the city. But the core is to meet the needs of the customer group for "stable living", "living close", "living decently", and "feeling a sense of belonging".
This is why the housing projects of many non - real - estate enterprises naturally have a living system thinking. They care not only about the house layout, facade, and public areas but also about commuting, canteens, cleaning, maintenance, smart devices, public kitchens, express storage, fitness spaces, leisure places, and community services. JD Youth City is a very typical example, where almost all daily needs can be met. Once the daily troubles are solved, staying becomes the option with the lowest decision - making cost. The core is not just to integrate several functions into the community but to solve a series of problems, with the ultimate goal of answering how to stabilize the lives of backbone manufacturing employees.
Behind this is actually a very clear account of organizational efficiency: a shorter commute means less ineffective consumption for employees every day; lower rent increases the probability of long - term talent retention for the enterprise; closer living facilities reduce a lot of invisible frictional costs for the organization. So, the house here has another meaning: a tool for organizational efficiency.
In traditional residential transactions, the relationship between developers and customers is short - lived. From subscription, signing the contract, getting a loan, delivery to maintenance, the relationship between the two parties ends quickly. So, many projects are naturally prone to short - termism. This is why non - real - estate enterprises sometimes take building housing more seriously than some developers. Because they can't escape. Whether the house is good, the service is good, the commute is convenient, and the facilities are usable will all be continuously reflected in employee satisfaction, organizational stability, and corporate reputation. If there are problems with the house, it's not just about homeowners' rights - protection. Employee relations, corporate reputation, and organizational trust will all be affected.
From a macro - perspective of the industry, when we put the cases of Fat Donglai, JD.com, Huawei, and Gree together, a conclusion makes me shudder: These enterprises all have an amazing common point - they are all brands that have taken customer experience and customer service to the extreme. And their development models and concepts also differ greatly based on the values of the enterprises themselves.
The thinking of traditional developers is: rent land, manufacture products, and make profits through sales. The starting point of the logical chain is a piece of land, and the end - point is to sell the houses. While the thinking of these consumer brands is: impress users, create scenarios, and finally operate for profit. The starting point is real people, and the end - point is to continuously serve and create value.
04
When Fat Donglai was talking about Dream City, there was a sentence that impressed me deeply, which was a seemingly casual "We also need to consider where to park the electric vehicles." This is not a consideration that came up only after Fat Donglai bought land and built houses. It's not because it wants to do property management, but because it naturally thinks about what troubles a real family may encounter from morning to night. This is what really makes developers shiver.
The future of real estate is moving from the "development era" to the "operation era". This means that competitiveness will increasingly boil down to a simple question - who knows the users better? In this regard, it seems that these service - oriented enterprises have already won at the starting line.
As more and more enterprises with customer awareness from the retail, manufacturing, and Internet industries enter the real estate market, what they bring may not be new products but rather a new value ranking. In their eyes, land is no longer the starting point; users are. Houses are no longer the end - point; life is. It reminds all developers to relearn something that they were once very familiar with but then gradually forgot: Residential real estate is first and foremost an industry about people, not just a financial product, an investment product, or even just a building product.
This article is from the WeChat official account "Really Called Lu Jun", written by the Really Called Lu Jun team and published by 36Kr with authorization.