Hello, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by for KE Holdings Inc.'s Q3 2021 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Also, today's conference call is being recorded. I will now turn the call over to your host, Mr. Matthew Zhao, IR Director of the company. Please go ahead, Matthew.
Thank you, operator. Good evening and good morning, everyone. Welcome to KE Holdings Inc., Beike's Q3 2021 earnings conference call. The company's financial and operating results were published in the press release earlier today and are posted on the company's IR website, ir.ke.com. On today's call, we have Mr. Stanley Yongdong Peng, our Co-Founder, Chairman, and Chief Executive Officer, and Mr. Tao Xu, our Executive Director and Chief Financial Officer. Mr. Peng will provide an overview of our strategies and business developments, and Mr. Xu will provide additional details on the company's financial results. Before we continue, I refer you to our safe harbor statement in our earnings press release, which apply to this call as we'll make forward-looking statements.
Please also note that Beike's earnings press release and this conference call include discussions of unaudited GAAP financial information, as well as unaudited non-GAAP financial measures.
Please refer to the company's press release, which contains a reconciliation of the unaudited non-GAAP measures to comparable GAAP measures. Lastly, unless otherwise stated, all figures mentioned during this conference call are in RMB. With that, I will now turn the call over to our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Stanley Peng. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you, Matthew. Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us today on our Q3 2021 earnings conference call. Before I go into more details, let me first provide a big-picture view of our industry. During the past quarter, the entire big housing transactions and services industry, including ourselves, faced a series of challenges. And the new and existing home and land market experienced substantial corrections, transactions froze, making a historical quarter. The industry collectively made difficult but correct adjustments. Not only is economic growth driven by high leverage not sustainable, but it will also negatively affect people's lives and create systematic risks resulting in correction, threatening the developers' business model that were based on high turnover, high leverage, and a high housing price. Our national policy goal of housing is for living, not for speculation.
That encourages both housing purchase and renting will become a castle in the sky. If the housing transactions and service industry blindly expand in scale without offering some professional services, it will be unable to ensure service quality, nor adequately protect our consumer rights, and an efficient housing market will be impossible. When we talk about do the right things, even if it is difficult, we are referring to instance where there is an opportunity to undertake daunting tasks with weak payoff in a short time, but will prove to generate great value in the long term.
As a participant of an industry in need of reform and under guidance of the Chinese government's policy to correct market instability and create more equitable housing circumstances, it's Beike's duty to show their responsibilities for the greater good rather than solely serving our business needs.
We firmly believe China's housing industry is facing crucial development opportunities. A promising era for existing homes and better livings is coming up upon us at an accelerated pace. With that backdrop in mind, let's talk about the industry and overall performance of our company in more detail. A series of policies such as purchase restrictions, loan quota limits, sales restrictions, reference prices, financing limitations, payment restrictions, and recent alerts from several developers have also dragged down market sentiment. The result has been a significant downtrend in the existing home transaction market in first-tier cities and most second-tier cities. GTV of existing home sales market declined 41.6% year-over-year, while GTV on new home sales market declined 14.1% year-over-year in Q3. During the sharp market downturn, the ecosystem of the brokerage industry worsened quickly.
The total number of brokerage agents on our platform shrunk, and the brokerage stores faced severe challenges. In Q3, the number of stores on our platform with a trailing 12-month GTV exceeding RMB 15 million declined 3.3% quarter-over-quarter. Accounting for 33.7% of total stores. Our mission is to promote admirable services and joyful living in China. We have come to a point where our corporate culture, organization capabilities, and our two decades of successful operations play a pivotal role as we move ahead. We have a strong team of seasoned senior manager taking charge at divisions, provincial and city levels. These dedicated leaders average more than 10 years usual services at Beike. They see better industry developments as their personal responsibility.
With their seasoned team and a great determination, we are confident we can navigate the tough market cycle and come out even stronger. During the Q3, we implemented a range of measures to ensure stable operations and a sufficient income for high-quality store owners and agents. We strive to inspire owners and agents to make the right choices, provide quality services in the face of challenges, and deliver on their commitment to take care of customers against interferences. We believe the key is focus and collaboration. First, we have resolutely promoted our agent specialization strategy, increasing productivity through maintaining focus. Second, we are diverting more resources to new home sales and rental services. Third, we further encourage cross-brand, cross-store collaboration and cooperation among existing and new home sales and rentals.
We also promote joint efforts between new and seasoned agents, as well as between functional teams and the business teams. Together, we keep our feet on the ground and carry on. During the Q3, the number of connected stores on our platform increased 2% quarter-over-quarter to 53,946, and only 1.7% of stores on our platform closed due to a market correction. We also facilitate some store merges to improve productivity, closed low-efficiency stores based on targeted diagnostics and dropped some non-cooperative stores from our platform. This also demonstrates that there is increasing stickiness among connected stores on our platform. A growing number of stores outside of our ACN have joined us for support during the down cycle.
29% of new stores that have joined our ACN in Q3 were from external Jianghu stores compared with 22% in Q2. The number of agents on our platform was 415,000 at the end of Q3, 6% lower than the prior quarter end. The decline was a result of increasing agent attrition resulting from the market correction. For the most part, this has been the industry normal, but also due to our initiatives in some cities to improve overall agent quality. As we implemented various mitigating measures in Q3, the agent attrition rate in Beijing and Shanghai remained lower at 3.9%, better than the 4.7% we saw during the same period last year.
Despite these broad challenges, our collaborative spirits continue to be the foundation of our business. In Q3, transactions on our platform completed through cross-store collaborations and the proportion of existing home listings contributed by non-Lianjia net stores both remained stable at 76% and 85.5% respectively. Moving to our quarterly performance and the measures we have taken with each of our business lines. With respect to existing home transaction services, according to Beike Research Institute, nationwide GTV for existing home sales declined 41.6% year-over-year in Q3. GTV for our existing home transaction was RMB 378 billion, with a year-over-year decrease of 34.3%.
Specifically, GTV for our existing home sales decreased by 36.8% year over year, demonstrating the relative resilience of our business in the down cycle. Functional allocation is the foundation of our ACN. Division of labor brings focus brings professionalism and compactness, and collaboration binds this all together. To this end, we execute our agent specialization strategy overall, 31,000 stores in Q3, covering over 300,000 agents. Transactions completed collaboratively by specialized agents on our platform accounted for 29.6% of total transactions in Q3, up from 14.4% in Q2. We are also making strides in digital empowerment. We launched the Xiaobei Existing Home Sales Training Camp, which is an online standardized and intelligent system for vocational training.
The Xiaobei Training Camp simulates the interactions between agents and customers in VR and offline property showrooms, and it provides performance evaluations. Leveraging our AI capabilities, we can identify best practice in the process, as well as each agent's weakness for targeted training. In Q3, more than 125 agents took Xiaobei Existing Home Sales Training in more than 1.2 million virtual sessions. In the future, as we accumulate more data in existing home sales services, Xiaobei Training Camp can be used for broader vocational training fields such as new home sales and home renovation services. Turning to new home transactions. As we mentioned, the degree of correction in the new home market in Q3 exceeded our expectations. According to the National Bureau of Statistics, GTV of property sales decreased by 14.1% year-over-year in Q3.
Our new home sales GTV was RMB 410 billion, down 2.5% year-over-year, performing much better than the broader market. The overall industry continued to trend downward from July to September, leading to further buildup of pressure on sales through. On the other hand, brokerage penetration bottomed out in Q3 as developers became more reliant on brokerage channels to accelerate sales to preserve liquidity. This, in turn, benefited those new home sales channels that provide quality services, protect the interests of our consumers, and hold strong agents mobilization capabilities. We can see this by looking at the increase in the number of new home projects for sale on our platform, which rose 13.6% from June to September.
While our platform has been well-recognized by developers, we continue adhering to high standards for project cooperation and performing end-to-end risk control to ensure timely and healthy payment collections. In our new home business, we have prioritized timely payment collections over scale expansion or any other metrics. In our view, timely collection always trumps commission rates. We strictly implemented an end-to-end risk management and a control system, which enable responsive measures within 24 hours after a risk warning is tripped. We do not expect to have significant risk in our new home business. We operate in a highly independent fashion and have never relied on resources, endowments, or relationships for our growth. Our confidence comes from the thousands of excellent stores and agents on our platform, and a strong customer recognition they have gained by performing high-quality services.
We are also forging ahead in digitalization and enriching online content for our new home business to provide consumers objective, neutral, personalized online content that narrows information gap. We are encouraging occupationally generated content or OGC. We are building an open platform to enable those professionals to supply comprehensive commentaries, positive or negative, and empower customers with more information in informed decision-making capabilities. This will further enhance the platform-generated content, such as our Housing Dictionary. At the end of Q3, our Housing Dictionary had achieved 100% coverage of the target new home listings on the market. Notably, in Q3, we created China's biggest database describing unfavorable factors of new home projects. This lays the groundwork for Beike to bridge the information gap and provide truly reliable and useful new home content. We will never stop our pursuit of top-quality services.
During the market corrections, we believe it is more important than ever to emphasize the governance of new home business conducts. At the end of Q3, our Five Don'ts commitment to developers have covered all developers in 66 cities. 11,091 new home projects in total. By mid-October, we identified a total of 47 misconducts and provided nearly RMB 2 million in compensation to developers, fulfilling our commitments to them. Moving to emerging services. In Q3, we steadily progressed home renovation business, including self-operated Beiwoo and Shengdu, which we are in the process of acquisition. Beiwoo completed the renovation of 1,127 home renovation units in Q3, up 35% quarter-over-quarter, while the contracted sales of Shengdu also increased more than 35% year-over-year by the end of Q3.
Regarding its operations, Beiwoo achieved breakthroughs in empowering both service providers and customers in Q3. For service providers, Craftsmen Academy, the industry's first full-service vocational training base opened in September. It aims to cultivate renovation professionals across the industry chain, nurturing designers, foremen, workers, and more. The focus is on general and professional competencies and leadership. In September, 394 foremen took part in the training. Long plagued by the shortage of high-quality service providers, industry infrastructure such as Craftsmen Academy is designed to upgrade renovation service standards and help industry practitioners achieve personal growth. Meanwhile, we upgrade our home start system to manage and empower both foremen and workers. This upgrade allows even the construction process to be standardized, modularized, assessed, distributed, and managed to the finest granularity.
Labor and the materials are centrally deployed by the platform with an accurate and controllable budgeting process. For customers, they will launch its 10 heart-to-heart service commitments in September to address the renovation industry key pain points for customers. Our pledge include double compensation for malicious increase beyond the scope of the contract, double refund for under-the-table charges, triple compensation for using fake materials, compensation for delays, and six others covering areas of budgeting, materials, construction, time, timelines, and services. In summary, in this round of corrections, we are accelerating our thinking on the additional value we can create for society and our social responsibility we should take. The answer has become increasingly clear. In China, people's yearning for a better life is reflecting in their desire to live and work with joy.
To facilitate joyful living, we hope to provide a rich variety of high quality and affordable housing services and products for those including the fresh college graduates, low-income groups, new urban citizens. Therefore, we are devoting more talents and resources to innovations and our rental services, and the regeneration of older residential communities to facilitate work that is rewarding and fulfilling. With the government's support of vocational education, we have established a multiple-layer training and education system for housing services providers. This includes the Source Academy for brokerage brand owners, Huaqiao Academy for store owners, and a Beike Brokerage Academy for agents, as well as Craftsmen Academy for renovation services providers, as we mentioned earlier.
Our goal is to have more home-related service providers with a path for long-term career development and cultivate more high-quality professionals and technical experts for the industry. All in all, despite the short-term impacts on our business and the industry at large during the market downturn, the overall trend in the housing market remains healthy. Lately, regulatory authorities have responded multiple times to market concerns. Consumers with reasonable funding needs are gradually being met. Meanwhile, by the accelerated introduction of a property tax pilot program, we believe that a long-term regulatory mechanism can be quickly formed. In turn, we see it promoting the emergence of a new batch of existing homes and the quality services sooner than we expected. The real estate sector in major developed countries accounts for approximately 10%-12% of a country's GDP.
Housing investment market makes up only about 5%, and the rest comprise a broader array of housing services. In contrast, the real estate sector contributes to merely 7% of China's GDP, with housing investment makes up a majority of China's real estate sector. This indicates massive potential for our domestic housing service industry. If the past five years have been a golden age of real estate development, then the next five years will be the age of joyful living, characterized by quality housing services. Short-term fluctuation imposed on long-term secular trends are simply noise. We follow our inner compass and will persist to become the leading comprehensive home services providers for the 300 million families in China.
With that, I would like to turn the call over to our Chief Financial Officer, Tao Xu, for a closer review of our Q3 financials. Thank you.
Thank you, Stanley. Thank you, everyone, for joining us. I would like to provide a brief overview for our Q3 of 2021 financial results. As we guided in the Q2 call, in past several months, we saw a deep, sharp drop of the overall property market, including land auction, new home market, and existing home market. Amid the unprecedented crackdown on speculation with an array of cooling measures, from credit tightening to reference home price being rolled out. This had adversely impact our operational and financial results in Q3. Though we are experiencing an unexpected and sharp market downturn, we still want to emphasize our three fundamental beliefs towards this industry. First, housing is one of the largest and the most complex industry in China, and a prime candidate for digital disruption.
Second, agents are and will continue to be indispensable to transaction and can be empowered to thrive. The third, professional and quality services build customer trust and transcends market cycles. We are confident that our continued effort in maintaining the best quality service by supporting our agents and further upgrading the infrastructure in housing transaction and services, will help us go through the cycles and further improve our service quality, efficiency, and business scale. We maintain a long-term view in pursuing our mission to transform the housing transactions and the services industry in China by leveraging our people, data insights, technology, and platform.
Turning to our financial details in Q3. Our net revenue was RMB 18.1 billion in Q3, compared to RMB 20.5 billion in the same period of last year, exceeding both the high-end of our guidance and the street consensus.
The year-over-year decrease was primarily attributable to the decline in total GTV of 29% to RMB 830.7 billion in Q3, from RMB 1.05 trillion in the same period of 2020. In particular, our net revenue from existing home transaction services were RMB 6.1 billion in Q3, compared to RMB 8.8 billion in the same period of 2020. Primarily due to a 34.3% decrease in GTV of existing home transaction to RMB 378.2 billion in Q3, from RMB 576.1 billion in the same period of 2020. Led by a slowdown of existing home market, which was affected by serious market cooling measures, especially loan quota red lines in Q3.
Our net revenue from new home transaction services increased by 2.5% to RMB 11.3 billion in Q3, from 11.1 billion in the same period of 2020. Primarily attributable to a moderate increase of new home transaction commission rate, while the GTV of new home transaction was RMB 410.1 billion in Q3, compared to RMB 420.7 billion in the same period of last year. Our net revenue from emerging and other services was RMB 610 million in Q3, from RMB 625 million in the same period of 2020.
Primarily due to a decrease of net revenue for financial services around the existing home transaction services, which was partially offset by a 29.4% increase of net revenue from the renovation services. Cost of revenues was RMB 15.3 billion in Q3, compared to RMB 15.2 billion in the same period of 2020. Gross profit was RMB 2.8 billion in Q3, compared to RMB 4.4 billion in the same period of last year. Gross margin was 15.2% in Q3, compared to 21.3% in the same period of 2020. The decrease in gross margin was mainly due to a lower contribution margin of existing home transaction, led by a decreased net revenue from existing home transaction at a relatively flat fixed compensation cost for the in-house agents.
Operating expenses were RMB 5.1 billion in Q3, compared to RMB 4.5 billion in the same period of 2020. General and administrative expenses were RMB 2,412 million in Q3, compared to RMB 2,649 million in the same period of 2020, mainly due to the decrease in share-based compensation expenses, which was partially offset by the increase of personnel cost and by the provision. Sales and marketing expenses were RMB 1,202 million in Q3, compared to RMB 1,026 million in the same period of 2020, mainly due to the increase of headcount in business development personnel.
Research and development expenses were RMB 1,043 million in Q3, compared to RMB 789 million in the same period of 2020. Mainly due to the increase in headcount of experienced research and development personnel. In addition, we recognize the impairment of goodwill of RMB 397 million in Q3, compared to none in the same period of 2020. Based on more conservative and a longer-term view of our outlook of the business of previously acquired assets, we conduct a comprehensive risk assessment and asset evaluation, and made a sufficient impairment provision accordingly. Loss from operations was RMB 2.3 billion in Q3, compared to loss of RMB 81 million in the same period of 2020.
Operating margin was negative 12.7% in Q3, compared to negative 0.4% in the same period of 2020. Primarily due to, one, a relatively lower gross margin in Q3 compared to the same period of 2020. Two, the increase of a percentage of total operating expenses at net revenue in Q3, primarily due to the decreased net revenue along with the relatively flat recurring operating expenses and additional impairment of Goodwill, as well as the severance provision of RMB 250 million incurred in Q3 compared to the same period of 2020. Excluding non-GAAP items, our adjusted loss from operation was RMB 1,435 million in Q3, compared to adjusted income from operation RMB 1,740 million in the same period of 2020.
Adjusted operating margin was -7.9% in Q3, compared to 8.5% in the same period of 2020. Adjusted EBITDA was negative RMB 550 million in Q3, compared to RMB 2,248 million in the same period of 2020. Net loss was RMB 1,766 million in Q3, compared to net income RMB 75 million in the same period of 2020. Excluding non-GAAP items, our adjusted net loss was RMB 888 million in Q3, compared to adjusted net income RMB 1,858 million in the same period of 2020. Net loss attributable to KE Holdings Inc. ordinary shareholders was RMB 1,765 million in Q3, compared to RMB 271 million in the same period of 2020.
Adjusted net loss attributable to KE Holdings Inc. was RMB 887 million in Q3, compared to adjusted net income attributable to KE Holdings Inc. RMB 1,857 million in the same period of 2020. Diluted net loss per ADS attributable to KE Holdings Inc.'s ordinary shareholder was RMB 1.5 in Q3, compared to RMB 0.33 in the same period of 2020. Adjusted diluted net loss per ADS attributable to KE Holdings Inc. ordinary shareholders was RMB 0.75 in Q3, compared to adjusted diluted net income per ADS attributable to KE Holdings Inc. ordinary shareholders RMB 1.38 in the same period of 2020.
As of September 30, 2021, the combined balance of our cash equivalent, restricted cash and the short-term investment amounted to RMB 52.7 billion or $8.2 billion. Additionally, as of September 30, 2021, the balance of our long-term cash items, mainly including the long-term investment, amounted to RMB 15.9 billion or $2.5 billion. As we mentioned at the beginning, although there have been some turbulence in the housing market recently, which brought significant negative impact to our business in short run, but it's also a chance for us to take a moment and look inward. Focus more on the essence of our business and refine our management. That is build the resources more effectively, paving the way for us to access opportunity and allocate for the long run.
Our decades of experience going through numerous challenges which give us capability to remain steadfast against the market volatilities, while coping with the agility. In the face of market downturn, we closely observe market change and timely adjust our business strategy to ensure the rapid implementation of those adjustments. Our initiative includes a more focus on efficiency, cost management to boost synergy, and allocate resources more efficient oriented and risk aversion. There are some measures in these three aspects to ensure the company's better operation of the new normal. For example, we introduced the new operation metrics, including the number of active store and active agents on our platform to better reflect our business progress.
Furthermore, we attach a great importance on accounts receivable collection by building a comprehensive risk control mechanism to closely monitor and evaluate the developers' credit quality trends.
In the Q3, we have booked better provision for all remaining receivables related to Evergrande and several other developers with a negative public opinion in order to reflect their recent credit quality trends. Turning to Q4 guidance. According to Beike Research Institute, nationwide GTV of the new home sales market is expected to fall over 47.4% year-over-year in the Q4. meanwhile, nationwide GTV of new home transaction market has declined by 20.1% year-over-year in the Q4. Based on above consideration, looking forward to the Q4 of 2021, we expect our net revenue to be between RMB 14.5 billion and RMB 15.5 billion, representing a decrease of approximately 31.6% to 36% from the same quarter of 2020.
This guidance reflects the potential impact of recent property market-related policy measures and the company's current preliminary view on the business and the market conditions, which is subject to change. Over the course of this year, despite many challenges we have encountered, we have been and will continue to weather the turbulence. This has provoked us to focus on ourselves, neglect the noise, inspiring every individual in our organization to fight, fight and never ever give up. We will never give in. We will not back down, and never stop doing what we know is right. We fully embrace the policy change and strongly believe in essence, the housing is for living, not for speculation, will bring the long-term favorable environment for the industry. We will stick to our path with the full commitment to serve our clients better.
We are confident that we would stay resilient and have our value recognized. This is what we have been doing, not perfectly, but we are on our way. That concludes our prepared remarks. We would like now to open the call for your questions. Operator, please go ahead.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you wish to ask questions, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. For the benefit of all participants on today's call, please limit yourself to one question. If you have additional questions, you can re-enter the queue. If you are going to ask the question in Chinese, please follow with English translation. Thank you. The first question we have is from Liping Zhao from CICC. Your line is now open.
Hey, Stanley, [Non-English content] , Matthew, [Non-English content] I'll translate for myself. I have two questions for you. Firstly, we have seen marginal improvements in terms of falling housing mortgage rates recently. What do we think of these positive signs, and can we expect the real estate market to bottom out, regulation-wise in the near term? Speaking of transactions, when will we see a rebound in terms of transaction volume? And secondly, investors are concerned about the state-owned property listing systems, which are regarded by some as replacements for third-party brokerage platforms. What do you think of the government's attitude towards the neutral positioning of real estate brokers? Thank you.
Thank you, Liping. Let me address your question. Regarding your first question, the decision and the deployment on the long-term mechanics of the real estate market are accurate and effective. We have witnessed the largest-ever regulatory package in terms of the quantity and the type of the policy, including restriction on property purchase, loan, sales, pricing, land auction, irrational price cut, financing, and payment, as well as the potential property tax. Accordingly, the property market across China quickly froze in Q3. The existing home sales market dropped 41.6% year-over-year in GTV, on par with our guidance in last earnings release call. The decline of the new home market was larger than our prior expectation, down around 14.1% year-over-year.
The downturn in Q3 was across the board rather than one single segment, showing a trend effect from the credit tightening to the cooling off of existing home sales, and then to the new home sales and land market, where price cuts in turn further weakened the existing home sales expectation. As the expectations behaviors of market participants resonated led to a pattern of a credit crunch that impeded the transactions and a downward revision of expectations. In particular, transaction volume of existing home sales market continued to drop month-over-month in Q3 to a long-term historical low, with some cities to a 10-year low record. Housing prices fell wildly, and our home buyers' enthusiasm index has fallen to a low level since 2019. The largest impact comes from the sharp fluctuation in loan origination paces.
At the first year adopting the housing loan concentration management, we saw a mismatch between the credit supply and the market pace. The average loan origination cycle continued to extend in Q3, 77% longer than the same period of last year. A large number of downstream transactions have also been affected. At the same time, a total of 14 cities introducing the existing home reference price policy. Down payment requirements for the house purchase were raised, while investment expectations on property price and overall market sentiment have been significantly dampened. On the other hand, new home sales in China also dropped sharply in Q3. From July to September, the new home sales area sold in China decreased by 9.5%, 17.6%, and 15.8% year-over-year respectively. Market in September was the worst one in seven years.
The new home sales market and the existing home sales market are highly correlated. In China, around 40% of new home buyers come from the improvement demand of existing home owners. The extended long cycle and the wait-and-see sentiment for the existing home sales market affect the purchase price for the new homes. The new home price falling and the heightened risk in certain developers further deepens the wait-and-see sentiment among the buyers, leading to the new home sales market cooling down profoundly. As for new home sales channel in Q3, a season during the so-called cash is king, developers were motivating sales channels widely to accelerate the sales through, and leading to an increased penetration rate for the sales channel.
However, risk in new home sales channel are also mounting up, because developers squeeze their suppliers, working capital, resulting in the delayed payments of accounts payable, also for the accounts receivable to the suppliers due to some industry supplier. Looking to the incoming policy and the regulations, in short-term, policy issuance are expect to peak off, and the market enters to a period to digest the previous market curves. We believe it is, it is likely for further policy tightening up. In terms of the housing price, according to Beike Research Institute, at end of this September, housing price dropped 1.5% on average from the highs this year, with some cities cutting on the price cut.
In terms of deleveraging to improve the financial housing, in 2020, 40% of 100 listed developers successfully lowered their risk rate versus 2019. In Q3 2021, residential housing leverage reported to a nine-year low. In October, our Vice Premier of the State Council, Liu He, says that the reasonable capital demand in real estate industry is being met. China will stick to unchanged path towards the house development. At the same time, other financial regulators also respond to market concerns. Given the effective regulation results and the falling transaction volume and the price, we foresee a significant lower frequency of the policy tightening ahead in Q4 versus last quarter. With the pace of the real estate credit supply being stabilized, which may bring some marginal change to the market.
Policy impact on the market sentiment will last for a considerable time of the period of time. From the long-term perspective, amid China's economy upgrade from a high-speed growth model to a growth and sustainability balanced one, we still see all around tightening of real estate and financial policies. The acceleration of pilot property tax reform signals advancement of long-term mechanism, and unchanged pursuit of deleveraging and de-risking both sides of the regulators and the developers. Despite the inevitable short-term pains, we expect to see a healthier and a more orderly real estate market in the future. Based on our observation, as mentioned, the downward pressure on the existing home and the new home market will continue beyond Q3.
Looking to our Q4 2021, the GTV of existing home sales market is estimated to further decline, down nearly 50% year-over-year, and 25% quarter-over-quarter. Meanwhile, the GTV of the new home sales market will drop by 20% year-over-year. For 2022, GTV is expected to drop by more than 10% for existing home sales market, and slightly for new home sales market. The absolute GTV level for existing home and new home markets are expected to bottom out in Q1 2022. In the second half of 2022, as the market fully pricing the regulatory policies and stabilized, rigid demand will come in, and a natural market recovery process will start. Therefore, Beike want to reiterate our position to the market.
Don't underestimate the power of the policy to correct market deviations, and don't underestimate the supporting power of market supply-demand dynamics. Regarding the new home sales market faced by the mounting short-term debt repayment pressures, developer will push themselves to promote sales and drive cash. From the long-term perspective, as developer shifts from financing-driven to operation-driven in a sales-focused approach, they will face the higher requirements on product developments and the target sales. Given the increasing divergence across cities. Developers increasingly customize the sales strategy and the comprehensive use of the sales channel should be a clear long-term trend, namely an increasing penetration rate of new home sales channel will come in as a clear long-term trend. It also presents more opportunities for Beike to pursue full cycle partnership with developers.
In short, the unprecedented policy regulation and the rapid market cooling off in 2021 brought a profound market correction. Over the longer horizon, the market is not as bad as what we perceive at this moment. In terms of annual volume, the market-wide transaction volume this year will still pass the growth versus last year. While the policies such as the existing home reference price have not changed the long-term supply and demand dynamics. As a mismatch between land, credit supply, and home purchase should be gradually improved. From long-term perspective, market fluctuations are normal. As a long-term mechanism being in place, either an overheated or overcooled market will normalize to the period of supply-demand balance. Regarding your second question, as a-
What we would like to say, at the central government level, a well-established administrative information system is a crucial step to standardize the real estate market orders. A robust real estate transaction administrative system can help governments to effectively track property listing and transaction data, take effective decisions and regulatory actions, and avoid a wild swing in the market due to potential land policies. Also, it can help governments to address the issue of fake property listing and the vicious competition haunting the industry. That's contributing to the better performance of the service provider and benefits for those who commit to quality service like Beike. As a consistent advocator and beneficiary of the regulated and the collaborative market, Beike formally supports government to upgrade e-administrative systems and is working with government departments in Beijing, Nanjing, and surrounding cities.
At the government level, local real estate e-administrative system dates back to 2012. Since then, real estate e-administrative system with similar function have been established in nine cities, including Beijing, Shanghai, Shengdu , and Xiamen, according to current statistics. For the purpose of this system, we want to clarify. Firstly, government have no intention to directly intervene in the transactions, and are in a better position to govern the market through a well-regulated commercial institution to navigate through the various transactions. Transaction processing involves significant risk, which can be shouldered by commercial player for government.
On the contrary, direct engagement in transaction by government associations requires a significant commitment of talent and financial resources, including formulation of rules, research and development investments, and a continuous system maintenance and iteration, and is also exposed to the risk in the transaction process. Secondly, governments are utilizing the livelihood services, including the social security, housing, vehicle, healthcare modules. A property listing module has been included in the local e-administrative system of Hangzhou and Shenzhen, which is introduced as a part of normal local e-administrative system upgrade. Thirdly, there have been hand-in-hand transactions without an intermediary across the country. Taking Hangzhou, for instance, from 2019 to September 2021, on average, 20% of transaction volume comes from hand-in-hand type of brokerage-free transactions, mostly between families and friends.
Such upgrades, the e-administrative system in place can steer those transactions into a more convenient and a safe process. In terms of outcome, the deliverables of a complex information system or transaction system depends on the level of improvement of consumer experience and the transaction efficiency, as well as the talent and the financial resources commitment, and the operational experience accumulated over time. Beike's proven track record across cities that have been deployed online e-administrative information system for years also demonstrates that a standard, standardized market actually contribute to the rise of the quality agents. A standardized marketplace with authentic property listing has the most direct impact to those who attract the traffic through the fake listings, and those who rely on the malicious competition and on ice-cold order or customer stealing to participate on a quality service managed platform.
We believe that along with upgrades of e-administrative system and further market standardization, inefficient supply will be further screened out, thus benefiting quality service providers. For Hangzhou, brokerage-free transactions tend to remain stable in terms of absolute volume, as most of them are not affected by the change in the market conditions, like the transfer between family members. We reinforce it in Hangzhou. The upgrade of the government's online existing home listing system has insignificant impact to the local transactions, like Wowojia and Beike's brands locally. For Shenzhen, based on what we know so far, the function of Shenzhen Real Estate Information System mainly includes, first, only a QR code generated for property. Firstly, based on the government information system, can the property owner publish their listing in other website?
In this way, that ensures the fake property listing frequency on the platform can be further dispelled. This is good for Beike, bad for so-called Anjuke website. The property owner is required to engage exclusive sales and agent within a given period of time. This transformation against the multiple listing agent model in the industry helps to solve the problems of unethical order sitting and the low qualities, low price competition that have plagued the industry. The system is designed to purify the industry environment and standardize the home transaction market. Now, on Beike's platform, consumers are accessible to more home listing and agent information, while agents can seek efficient collaboration supported by the platform rules and the infrastructure. Beike's core platform value and operation capability are benefiting from those launched government e-administrative systems security.
Thank you, Tao Xu. That's very clear.
Thank you. We have the next question from the line of Miranda Zhuang from Bank of America. Your line is now open.
Thank you. [Non-English content] Thanks management for the sharing today and for taking my question. Can you please elaborate more on the latest development and expectation for the home renovation business and other new initiatives? Thanks. [Non-English content]
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Let me quickly translate. This is Danny. Let me quickly address your question. Firstly, the home renovation decoration business is very similar, like the housing transaction business, meaning the overall industry size are very big, but overall the user experience are extremely worse. We do believe in this industry we have a lot of opportunities can continue leverage what we have accumulated in the past two decades. For the home decoration business, we do have a couple of the takes in terms of the overall outlook, right? Firstly, the overall China customers will continue more focus on the qualities. We do believe that will be the fundamental, right?
Because if you look at the recent policy trend, definitely the golden times for, you know, the new homes is pretty much has been passed. The next era for it definitely will be, you know, the people is more focused on the joyful living. We do believe the opportunities will be arising from this kind of transition period. Secondly, we do believe the scientific management will continue to help us and also help the industry to upgrade, right? Especially followed by some of the other initiatives, for example, like more digitalization, we do believe we can restructure and continue our practice of about those kind of scientific management into the home decoration and renovation business.
Thirdly, it's about the value about the, you know, the service providers in the home decoration and renovation business. If you look at the overall, the conditions for the service providers in the home decoration and renovation industry is still relatively low.
By doing the continuously training as well as upgrade for those kind of professionals, we do believe it will help us to continue help those kind of service providers to further improve their professional career as well as the whole professionalism for the whole industry. In summary, we do believe the home decoration and renovation business is not a naturally so called a fast industry, right? It means we continue dedicate doing the things difficult. Right behind that means will be a lot of challenges as well as difficulties that we will face. We do believe our faith as well as our opportunities as well as the method we actually have been accumulate in the past two decades will bring the continuous value into this industry.
Meanwhile, from the quantitative side, I think some people are talking about the difficulties for the home decoration business, whether it could be sometimes like a RMB 1 billion revenue in one city, and whether a company could achieve like a RMB 10 billion of the revenues, overall. We do believe, I mean definitely there will be some of the, you know, the new players emerging from that industry. To reach those kind of RMB 10 billion revenue milestones in the foreseeable future. Definitely Beike also we have a lot of opportunity to achieve that as well.
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In summary, as I mentioned before, we do continue to focus on the three parts of our efforts, right? Firstly, how we can in the area of the home services we can further improve the SOP management as well as by upgrading the whole service procedures by the continuous digitalization. Secondly, the scientific management will be our key focus as well. By doing this, we can continuously improve the efficiency for the whole industry. The third part and most importantly is how we can continue to bring the value to the service providers in the home decoration and renovation services and continue to improve their professionalism as well as improve their dignity for the work.
All in all, as I mentioned, generally speaking, in terms of our home renovation and decoration services, we will continue to focus on how we can further improve the overall customer user experience. We do believe that's a very tough campaign for us, but we have the trust as well as the confidence we can continue to bring our mission into reality, which means the service provider with dignity as well as joyful living ultimately. Thank you.
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This is Danny. I also want to give you additional colors in terms of the previous question regarding to the so-called you know the e-government administrative systems rumor, right? What we do believe is definitely there are always be a, you know, the bigger platform, problems underneath of the smaller platforms, right? In order to better to see what the intention behind of the government, we need to look at the, you know, the policy trend in China. If we look at the general the policies in China, definitely there are two major parts. One is house for living in all house regulation, another one is the encouraging of both of the housing purchase and renting, right?
Based on those two fundamental policies as well as in addition to the recent trends such as the pilot program for the property tax, we do believe, you know, during that kind of, you know, the stability of the policy trend, the Beike's value will continue to shine. Since we can provide the very comprehensive solutions, which is quite in line with those kind of policies trend going forward. Meanwhile, we do believe, as we mentioned before, our fundamental orientation for our business is also quite in line with the two policies direction, right? Under those kind of assumptions, we do believe, you know, some of the rumors will definitely fade away in the market.
As far as we can continue to adhere to the policy, continue improve the efficiency as well as improve the user experience. We do believe the Beike's value will continue shine, and will continue to bring the value into the whole industry. Thank you. Back to you.
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Thank you. We have the next question from John Lam from UBS. You may proceed with your question.
Thank you. [Non-English content] I've 2 questions, the first question is mainly on the property tax. How the property tax affect the buyers and also the sellers sentiment and also their purchase behavior. Also not sure if management hear anything regarding on the implementation details of the property tax. Second is regarding on the competitive landscape. First, on the one hand, we have seen Centaline have massively lay off people about 7,000 people and also their senior management also left the company. At the same time, a major online news media company, Toutiao they also announced to enter into the property agency sector. How the management view the property agency competitive landscape? Thank you. [Non-English content]
Thank you John. Let me address your first question regarding the property tax. Recently, as indicated in an essay published by President Xi on journal Qiushi, China should strengthen the regulation and adjustment over the high income class, proactively and prudently promote legislation and reform on property tax and ensure effective implementation of a pilot program. We believe that the government will definitely and duly expand the scope of the pilot property tax to more cities. In October, the State Council is authorized to carry out a pilot property tax reform in certain regions. Property tax as a new local tax package will play its fundamental role to narrow down the gap between the rich and the poor. Considering the requirements on proactively and prudently
Promoting the legislative reform on property tax, coupled with the current market self-correction since mid-late September, have made falling existing home sales volume and the price, as well as the mounting risk in developers. We recently see our current focus will be stabilizing expectation and preventing overheating the market. As expected, the scope of pilot property tax will extend to more cities applicable to all existing residents than the incremental. Nevertheless, the focus of the property tax should be on the multiple residents or the residents with a higher total value or the high unit price. Fully considering the affordability of the household to ensure the basic living needs while attaching importance to change the wealth gap among the household to better achieve the goal of a common prosperity.
The introduction of property tax will have significant short-term impact on the market.
Some owners of multiple residences may sell part of their properties, leading to a higher market supply and enhance the wait-and-see sentiment among the buyers in the short term. However, from the long-term perspective, transaction volume is predicated on housing supply and demand fundamentals. The rational launch of the property tax by laying a solid foundation for effective common prosperity will contribute to stable long-term market expectation and prices. Only in such scenario will the stabilized price rationalization rationalize the market and smoothen the fluctuation in the long run, can rigid demand be further unleashed, resulting in a higher home turnover rate, better affordability, and the roofs for everyone and enhance the potential growth in transaction volume. Regarding the current market situation for Beike and Centaline, let me talk about separately. Let me talk about the Beike first.
It's obviously for the company like ByteDance with a cross-industry traffic advantage, that is its natural impulse for them to try to monetize their traffic in different areas. We believe that both the investment community and XingFuLi fully understand that in an industry with a low frequency, high value transaction, and a long decision-making process, the value provided by the online traffic models is relatively limited, and it cannot truly meet customer demand for information. Without a thorough understanding of the customer and the industry, even a traffic advantage is difficult to convert to the transactions. To integrate the online module with the offline module, one cannot resort to short-termism, such as unfair competition and capital-based disorderly expansion, including setting low commission rate, high rebate, unrealistic binding valuation promise.
That's definitely a false proposition, which will not sustain and could cause antitrust violations.
In the past, in the last year, mega internet companies and developers entered into the industry with a high profile, all walked away later with the rationalities approved. Tmall, Haofang, and Fangcheng are good showcase for their reference. In this industry, there must be more than one business model and more than one company that can be successful. Although for us, there's only one way though to success. We believe in the value of taking good care of the consumers. We believe in the value of sharing successful experience and infrastructure to the industry and empower and enhance the industry efficiency. We believe in the value of protecting the interest of the service providers, paying commission in time, and to work with the sense of security and fairness.
We believe in the value of the hundreds of thousands excellent service providers who have been serving the community for many years and established their unique moat in their home services. We believe in the value of time. This is what we have been doing, not perfectly, but we are on our way. Last but not least, if Beidahuang still decides to move to the offline transactions, especially under the current market momentum, we believe they will have their lessons learned from the market and the players who truly understood this industry like Beike. For the Centaline, I did see news and I cannot comment on our market players' decision and the behavior. I would like to say KE and the high-quality service providers represent the most valuable assets of the industry.
During the period of transition, Beike will formally support the retention of our key and high-quality service providers through our compensation and benefit systems, team culture and organizational capability, and the business strategy developed over years. Meanwhile, Beike's existing commission mechanism and the network effect allow each agent to have much more opportunities to participate in transactions and secure more stable income than those on the other platforms, and enable collaboration and shared success. As a result, the overall turnover rate of agents and the percentage of store closures on the platform are significantly lower than the industry average.
We are more resilient in the downturn, and have the ability to outperform when the market recovers. As the market is in the downturn, the industry production capability is shrinking and the performance of the stores on Beike's platform also has some impact.
In the Q3, the number of stores below the minimum sustainable level of turnover, the so-called bright line, the annual GTV of RMB 50 million on the platform continued to rise, and the percentage of stores above such level decreased from 37% in Q2 to 33.7% in Q3. We don't know the overall turnover rate of the industry, but we can imagine how depressed the industry is. In the downturn cycle, the trends of huddling together to keep warm in the industry is more evident. We noticed that the cooling of the market promotes more stores and agents who were reluctant to join the platform finally joined the Beike platform.
The number of brands connected to Beike increased to 300 in Q3, and also the percentage of newly added stores from external sales, new home sales channel increased greatly from 22% in Q2 to 29% in Q3. The percentage of stores closed due to poor management, poor operation in Beike, only 1.7% in Q3, compared to 1.1% in Q2, indicating no large-scale store closure. Most of the third-party store owners chose to stay with platform in downturn cycle and operate conservatively by dismissing inefficient personnel and some by merging stores. The percentage of store merges on the platform increased from 0.8% in Q2 to 1.4% in the Q3.
In Q3, our number of client store and agent the overall turnover rate was 8.8%, compared with 8% in previous quarter. The turnover rate of Lianjia in Beijing and Shanghai remained stable. While the turnover rate of non-Lianjia agent increased by 1% quarter-over-quarter, then remained flat compared to last Q3. The average turnover rate in the industry is 15% on normal days, and will get worse in downturn cycle. The turnover rate of agent on Beike is still considerably lower than the industry average. Based on our judgment of the market, the industry production-
Based on our judgment on the market, the industry production capability will continue to shrink, and it is expected that the turnover of agent will bottom out in the Q1 of 2022. Consequently, we would like to say the turnover of putting performance of store and agent increased significantly in line with the market trend, but outperformed the market condition. Okay. Thank you, John.
Thank you. [Non-English content]
Thank you. We are now approaching the end of the conference call. I will now turn the call over to your speaker host today, Mr. Matthew Zhao, for closing remarks.
Thank you, operator. Thank you once again for joining us today. If you have further questions, please feel free to contact Beike's investor relations team through the contact information provided on our website. This concludes today's call, and we look forward to speaking with you again next quarter. Thank you and goodbye. You can disconnect. Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude our conference for today. Thank you all for participating. You may now all disconnect.