Real estate regulation triggers a wave of resignations, some people would rather cut their wages and switch careers
Author: Ma Yifan
[ 万科截至今年6月30日在册员工数量为10.58万人，相比去年同期的13.35万人减少了20.7%。 ]
“We are like pigs falling off the wind. We were used to high salaries in the past, but now we have to lower our heads to learn.” said a former real estate agent who had just left the real estate industry for a few months.
For real estate people, the golden age of lying down and making money has completely passed. The organizational structure of real estate companies is becoming more streamlined and school recruitment is shrinking. Many people who see the trend are looking for a career change.
Although the current situation of real estate, finance, and the Internet as China’s three high-paying industries has not changed yet, a new phenomenon is that some real estate people voluntarily cut their wages to what they consider to be “emerging industries” or “stable industries.”
The latest mid-year report data shows that the number of employees of the leading Vanke (000002.SZ) has dropped sharply from the peak of 130,000, and the number of employees in the company has dropped by 20% in the past year; the number of employees in real estate companies such as KWG Pacific, R&F, and Tahoe A sharp drop of more than 30% in a year.
Guan Peisheng’s loss
Ye Xiaoluo, a “post-95” master who graduated from a prestigious “985” school, recently chose to resign from a well-known real estate company in East China. Recalling the scene when she became a trainee of the real estate company in 2018, she sighed lightly.
“At that time, real estate, enterprise, and school recruitment were very popular. The monthly salary of graduate students started at more than 20,000 yuan, and there was a high housing subsidy. The promotion channel for management trainees was clear.” Ye Xiaoluo said.
After joining the company, Ye Xiaoluo went through job rotation and assignment projects, and then fixed his post to engage in the core marketing management work of the real estate company. In the past, this was almost a smooth promotion for fame and fortune.
But she has also experienced the busyness of 996 and even 007 on the project, the intrigue and competition within the department, and she is exhausted physically and mentally. By 2021, she finally made up her mind to leave.
“There are definitely many reasons for leaving. For example, I can’t accept constant expatriates. Even if many real estate companies are headquartered in Shanghai, but the projects are in other places, young people want to be promoted, and they have to accept long-term expatriates.”
For Ye Xiaoluo, the more important reason is that she is no longer optimistic about the real estate industry. “I’m still young, and I can’t spend my entire life in the sunset industry.”
However, Ye Xiaoluo’s accumulated marketing experience and resource contacts in real estate companies do not seem to be useful in other industries. The Internet giants that she most want to enter have no counterpart social recruitment positions. After working in a real estate company for nearly three years, her packaged annual salary has exceeded 350,000 yuan, but she eventually moved to a start-up company, and the annual salary was only 180,000 yuan.
Ye Xiaoluo’s experience is not alone. Yiwen, who graduated with a master’s degree in architecture from a prestigious foreign school, initially joined a Hong Kong-owned housing company as a management trainee. He also participated in several well-known projects of the housing company. In the past three years, the Hong Kong-owned housing company has The scale of investment continues to shrink.
“Seeing that there are fewer and fewer projects, I realize that there is no future.” Yiwen believes that Hong Kong-owned real estate companies are too conservative in the Mainland, so he switched to a fast-developing private real estate company. The result is not long. In less than two years, despite the apparent performance increase of this private housing company, it is known internally that its business is not doing well, secretly layoffs at the end of the year, and the year-end bonus has not been issued.
This year, Yiwen finally joined a foreign-funded enterprise that has nothing to do with real estate with his foreign education. After working for many years, he finally could only change jobs with an equal salary.
Find new heights
“Maybe I am fed up with the feeling of decline and turmoil in the real estate industry. In the past few months, many people around me have switched jobs to the Internet, state-owned enterprises and state-owned enterprises. Even if the salary is cut by two or three hundred thousand, there are many people.” Zhang Wei, a real estate employee, has suddenly felt the new trend of job-hopping recently.
Although the Internet industry continues to be turbulent, and major companies such as Ali, Tencent, and Byte are deeply questioned by public opinion, in the eyes of real estate people, the Internet platform is large and still on the rise. Compared with the real estate industry, there are more possibilities.
“Internet giants are difficult for real estate people to enter. The human and financial positions are the easiest to switch tracks because many things are connected; like the core positions of real estate, land investment, marketing, etc., it is useless if you leave the real estate circle. Now, the concept of Internet marketing is completely different.” The above-mentioned real estate company employee said.
Even if they enter a major Internet company, real estate people need to bow their heads to learn sincerely and adapt to the new environment.
An employee of an East China real estate company said that some friends around him have spent a lot of money to change jobs to Ali. For example, the family moved from Shanghai to Hangzhou, the annual salary has also dropped, and they have to familiarize themselves from the beginning.
“Internet slang, user thinking, and flat management are all very different from real estate. The Internet is also internalized. My friend felt that after leaving the real estate, he was beaten up.”
In addition to those who are ambitious to enter the Internet giants, there is another group of real estate developers who hope to “lay flat” through job-hopping.
At the same time, the property market has become more and more stringent in the past two years, and the real estate industry has struggled very hard under the coercion of policies.
Therefore, some real estate developers who are fed up with node anxiety, policy suppression, and industry turmoil hope to find a job in a central enterprise or state-owned enterprise. Although the money is small, it is stable.
“Salary reduction is affirmative. General real estate companies at my level can open up to 600,000 to 800,000 yuan in annual salary, but state-owned enterprises can only reach 300,000 to 400,000 yuan.” The middle-level staff told China Business News that the reason why she chose to switch to a state-owned enterprise was mainly because she believed that the real estate industry was too turbulent, and she also hoped that she would have more time to spend with her family in the future.
Glitz fades
When the real estate industry bubble was inflated extremely, an accessory-a huge talent bubble was born.
“Hundreds of millions of year-end awards”, “87 presidents of 100 billion real estate companies”, “2 million can not dig a vice president”, “promises of high-level income of more than 100 million”… These are all myths about the richness of the workplace in the real estate industry in the past five years.
In 2017, many private housing companies suddenly called out 100 billion and 300 billion targets. They expanded at a high speed and built new regions across the country, creating a large number of “post-80s” regional headquarters. There are also many local real estate companies that have moved their headquarters to Shanghai, digging for presidents, vice presidents and chief financial officers everywhere, and the value of this group of people has also risen.
Taihe Chairman Huang Qisen, who sits in a Chinese courtyard and interviews more than 20 senior executives a day, once reflected: “The 100 billion real estate enterprises are more of the booming Chinese economy (product). We have caught up with the dividends. There is a bubble in real estate, and the biggest bubble is in talent. This thing is the hero of the times.”
The good times are not long. With the downturn of the real estate industry in the past three years, not only has the real estate industry experienced a surplus of presidents and regions, but also real estate companies have started layoffs, and “prescientists” have voluntarily fled the real estate industry.
From the financial report data, in the past three years, the number of employees of leading real estate companies has dropped sharply from a peak of more than 130,000.
As of June 30 this year, Vanke had 105,800 registered employees, a decrease of 20.7% from 133,500 in the same period last year.
The number of formal employees of R&F Group has dropped by 37.6% in one year. At the end of 2019, there were 62,300 formal employees, and by the end of 2020, only 38,900 were left. R&F explained in its annual report that the decrease in the number of employees was caused by the sale of the property management company.In addition, the debt is thunderingTahoe GroupLast year, the number of employees was only more than 6,000, a year-on-year decrease of 31.5%; Xiangsheng Holdings decreased by 23% last year; KWG Taifu fell by 47%.
Not only is the staff greatly reduced, but the salary in the real estate industry is also getting lower and lower. According to the statistics of the Crane Research Center, the total salary growth rate of 80 typical listed real estate companies has been narrowed for three consecutive years. In 2020, the per capita salary has declined for the first time, with a 50-point value of 183,000 yuan per year. The salary of executives has dropped year-on-year. 5%.
According to data from the National Bureau of Statistics, from 2010 to 2019, among non-private entities, the ranking of real estate compensation fell from 12th to 14th; among private entities, the ranking of real estate compensation fell from 5th to 6th.
However, in general, real estate is still “a lean camel bigger than a horse.” According to Crane’s statistics, the average salary of the real estate industry in 46 cities (excluding sales agencies and properties) will reach 14,000 yuan/month to 15,000 yuan/month in 2020, which is 1.7 times higher than the average salary of 46 cities.
Therefore, compared with other industries, the salary of the real estate industry is properly located at a high level and is highly competitive. In key positions, the pattern in which real estate, finance, and the Internet belong to the three high-paying industries remains unchanged for the time being.
(At the request of the interviewee, Zhang Wei, Ye Xiaoluo, and Yiwen in the text are pseudonyms)
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