Homesharing in China on sites like Airbnb and Tujia is on the rise as the country amid an increasing number of vacant homes.
Rising real estate prices and a growing housing supply have produced “ghost towns” with more than 50 million vacant homes in the country, according to figures cited by Skift.
Chinese homeowners are increasingly using homesharing sites as a mainstay source of income, rather than to supplement their incomes.
Yang Changle, the chief operations officer of Tujia, China’s largest homesharing company, said that out of the 130,000 landlords and operators his company provides services for, 80,000 operate more than one shared home.
China’s sharing economy hit a market value of $680 billion last year, and some estimate it will grow at an annual rate of 40 percent over the next five years.
Airbnb launched in China in 2008, and as of last October had 120,000 listings. Hong Ge, former head of Airbnb in China, stepped down last year after only a few months on the job.[Skift] – Rich Bockmann