The Impact of Internet Real Estate Intermediary Platform on the Real Estate Market

Abstract

The real estate industry not only plays an important role in the economy development of China, but also receives widespread attention from public as it involves the vital interests of every family. High housing prices and violent fluctuations are often criticized as obstacles to the further economic development. In many product markets, it is found that e-commerce platforms have significant advantages in information symmetry and transparency. This helps to stabilize prices and reduce volatility. However, there is no research specifically on the impact of e-commerce platforms on the real estate market. This paper explores the impact of the emerging Internet real estate intermediary platform on the real estate market based on difference-in-difference model(DID). This paper analyzes the real estate transactions data in Beijing from 2015 to 2016 and the interest rate cut policy of People's Bank of China in Octorber 2015. The results show that compared with the traditional intermediary, the Internet trading platform has significantly reduced the housing price increase and transaction fluctuations after the policy shock. Taken into account the characteristic differences in the property of the two trading methods, we use the PSM-DID method to reanalyze the data. And We did not found any difference about the results.