As more and more existing residential properties are under institutional trusteeship, the quotation system of home furnishing factories needs to be reformed.

Ziroom opens up its value-added rental model, while Oppein makes its idle factory space available for lease. The two events happened less than a year apart, yet they point to the same underlying industry challenge.

As more and more existing residential properties are placed under institutional trusteeship, homes no longer only need to be fully decorated before handover — operators now have to calculate the costs of 10 years of rental operation and 10 years of maintenance. However, home furnishing factories are still using old quotation sheets, submitting bids by multiplying the ex-factory unit price by the number of sets. Following this line of reasoning, it becomes clear why this quotation format that has been used for many years has ceased to be effective first.

Two sets of accounts separated by one year

On October 18, 2026, at Ziroom's 15th anniversary launch event, Xiong Lin, Co-founder, Chairman and CEO of Ziroom, announced that the full capability of its complete value-added rental model will be opened to the entire industry over the next five years. Over the 15 years since its founding, Ziroom has managed more than 1.3 million decentralized housing units in total, plus around 70,000 entire-building housing units, with roughly 700,000 units currently under its management.

Last November 25, Oppein Home released an announcement stating that it planned to lease out part of the idle site of its fundraising investment project to external parties. The total area of factory space for lease in Wuhan is 13,800 square meters, with an external lease term of 12 months.

Oppein's factory leasing is not an isolated case. Since the second half of 2025, Goldmedal has leased out part of the space of its western base, QuMei has put a total of 120,000 square meters of factory space in Shunyi and Chaoyang districts of Beijing up for rent, Zhongyuan has vacated idle production lines in Anji, and Jiangshan Oppein has converted its Yuzhong and Chongqing bases into industrial parks for investment attraction.

When the two events are put together, the industry finally sees clearly: the leasing of factory production capacity and the restructuring of accounting books on the asset management side are two sides of the same cyclical adjustment.

It is necessary to clarify the boundary first: there are two completely different sets of accounting logic in the existing housing market. For private residences for self-occupation and family renovation, product selection is based on aesthetics, budget and durability; this article focuses on the part of existing housing stock that is managed by long-term rental apartments, affordable rental housing projects and entire-building asset management platforms, which requires long-term operation accounting.

From "One-off Deal" to "10-year Cost Calculation"

In the sublease era, platforms bear all the costs of housing acquisition and renovation, and make profits from the rent spread. New trusteeship models such as value-added rental re-divide cost and operation responsibilities: the owner bears the decoration investment, while the asset management party is responsible for design, construction, rental and long-term operation and maintenance, with a guaranteed minimum return plus revenue sharing.

In the logic of institutional trusteeship, a house is no longer a physical object that is finished once decoration is completed, but an operating asset that continuously generates rental income as well as costs for simple renovation and maintenance.

Procurement standards have thus undergone a fundamental shift. Ziroom's Xinshe 3.0 achieves renovation and delivery in 33 days, Suyoujia 3.0 focuses on one-stop full furnishing within 7 days, and Guisu 1.0 is designed for the renovation of old public housing. The focus of decoration has shifted from one-time procurement to considerations such as whether this cabinet can be prefabricated and assembled to shorten the construction period, whether this integrated bathroom can reduce the probability of leakage, and whether this soft furnishing can withstand the loss caused by frequent tenant turnover.

For institutional procurement for long-term rental, affordable rental and entire-building asset management projects, the core of evaluation has shifted from ex-factory price to the full-lifecycle holding cost of a single unit.

Not only Ziroom, but also Ayu, Boyu, Guanyu, Youchao, China Merchants Yidun, and local state-owned affordable rental housing platforms across the country are converging on their centralized procurement standards. Decoration investment is no longer fully covered by platforms in a one-size-fits-all manner, but is set in reverse according to rental rate, single unit construction cost, vacant days, and maintenance work orders. The procurement counterpart of home furnishing factories has shifted from the procurement department of real estate developers to the supply chain decision-making end of asset management platforms.

New Accounts That Brands Fail to Figure Out

The huge housing rental agency market is shifting from the sublease model to the value-added rental model in batches. For home furnishing brands and factories that take orders from housing rental trusteeship institutions, their operation strategies will undoubtedly need to change accordingly. After all, the entire previous supply system was built based on the incremental era.

The first problem is mismatched scenarios. The unit layouts of new finished residential properties are standardized, which is suitable for mass replication and production scheduling. A large number of old existing properties under institutional trusteeship are over 20 years old, with aging pipelines and irregular dimensions. The renovation window has been compressed from several months to 33 days or even 7 days, and the production scheduling cycle and delivery system of factories designed according to the pace of new housing construction simply cannot keep up with the fast pace of existing property renovation. Old production lines can produce good products, but cannot meet the requirement of "finishing decoration and putting the unit on the rental market within a week".

Discourse power is converging. In the incremental era, decision-making was decentralized. Centralized procurement by real estate developers focused on parameters and bulk prices, design institutes locked component specifications through drawings, home decoration owners focused on style and budget, and distributors only passed on end-user preferences. In the institutional market, these scattered discourse powers are gathered in the supply chain positions of asset management platforms, and assessment indicators have become scenarios that can withstand use by different tenants, the number of years of reuse, and whether the products can be flexibly placed, among others.

The accounts are not fully understood. Old quotations are self-consistent by multiplying ex-factory price by the number of purchased sets, while new accounts need to calculate the full-lifecycle holding cost. The longer the on-site construction takes, the higher the vacancy loss. The more easily components are damaged, the greater the later maintenance expenditure.

Old account: Ex-factory price × Number of purchased sets = Total cost; New account: Decoration cost per unit + 10-year vacancy loss + full-cycle maintenance expenditure = Real holding cost.

Products need to be delivered by space. Self-occupied home decoration selects products by category and aesthetic preference, while institutional projects deliver by space and operation and maintenance requirements. Bathroom spaces require dry assembly and hardware parts that can withstand high-frequency use. Bedroom spaces require wear-resistant mattresses that can be disassembled and washed, and cabinets that adapt to irregular dimensions. Doors and windows need to be sound-insulating, heat-preserving, and support in-situ replacement of old windows. Smart devices need to be incorporated into a unified operation and maintenance system, so that faults can be diagnosed remotely. Retail sells a good individual product, while institutions need a housing unit that can generate profits. Shifting from selling individual products to selling complete space solutions is the change in supply mode brought by this account system switch.

Oppein, Goldmedal, QuMei, Zhongyuan and other enterprises have successively leased out their not-yet-saturated factory space and fundraising investment sites, which is not just isolated cases of idle assets, but the superficial result of the manufacturing end collectively paying for the old cycle, with multiple structural mismatches being the underlying cause.

374 million existing housing units are redrawing the procurement list

This supply-demand mismatch is not a phased fluctuation of individual enterprises, but a systematic pattern reshaping taking place in the institutionalized existing property track.

On the policy side, the implementation of the 14th Five-Year Plan affordable rental housing construction and rental regulations promotes the concentration of decentralized housing units to institutionalized operation, which directly drives the demand for prefabricated, fast-delivered and maintainable components.

On the market side, according to Ziroom's disclosure, there are 374 million urban housing units in stock, 27% of which are over 30 years old. The rental population exceeds 300 million, but the institutionalization rate is only 15%, far lower than the 60% in Japan, the US and Europe.

At the same time, the average rental cycle of housing units has extended from 42 days to 51 days, and the cumulative rent has dropped by 17%. Even Zebon's Qingyuan base and Mengtian's digitalized fundraising investment project have been postponed one after another. The postponement of fundraising investment projects is the re-pricing of demand expectations by the capital side, with capital expenditure tightened simultaneously.

What is really forcing the manufacturing end to reform its quotation system is the part of existing housing stock that is revitalized through institutionalized operation. Institutional projects pursue quantifiable indicators, including installation efficiency, failure frequency, and how much rental suspension time can be reduced during the turnover period of housing units. The scale of existing housing stock continues to grow, the institutionalization rate needs to be improved urgently, but the difficulty of renting out housing units is also rising. This supply-demand tension will eventually be transmitted to the re-evaluation of the quotation system of home furnishing factories.

Who is Re-measuring Time After the New Housing Era

In the incremental era, factories calculated ex-factory prices and the number of delivered sets; in the era of institutionalized existing housing stock, platforms focus on vacant days, maintenance work orders and the long-term cost of a single unit.

Ziroom has rolled out its new accounting system, while Oppein has vacated its old factories. The measurement scale of the quotation sheet has shifted from "ex-factory price per square meter" to "full-lifecycle holding cost per unit".

When housing becomes an asset in continuous operation, home furnishing components are put into a time container of 10 years of rental, maintenance and turnover. Thoreau wrote in Walden: "We do not dwell in them, but are imprisoned in them." In the past, the industry chased incremental scale, but now it needs to calculate the long-term wear and tear of housing over 10 years.

When Oppein vacated its factory space, Yao Liangsong's phrase "find meat in the gaps between bones" has taken on a new meaning: as the incremental dividend fades away, opportunities lie in the long-term operation and maintenance of old housing units.

Just as Wu Xiaobo's research on industrial cycles states: "The era of high growth is over, and the era of high value has just begun." The manufacturing end no longer only competes on low prices, but on the ability of products to stand the test of time.

The old quotation system is blocked out, and the answer written in the new account book is: only those who understand time can understand the home in the next decade.