Hello, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by for KE Holdings Inc's Second Quarter 2021 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Today's conference call is being recorded. I'll now turn the call over to your host, Mr. Matthew Zhao, IR Director of the company. Please go ahead, Matthew.
Good evening and good morning, everyone. Welcome to KE Holdings Inc, or Beike's Second Quarter 2021 Earnings Conference Call. The company's financial and operating results were published in the press release earlier today, and were posted on the company's IR website, www.investors.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 applies to this call, as we will make forward-looking statements. Please also know 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 CNY. With that, I will now turn the call over to our Chairman and CEO, Mr. Stanley Peng. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you, Matthew. Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining our conference call today regarding our performance in the second quarter of 2021. This is our first earnings call since the passing of our visionary founder and chairman Emeritus, Mr. Zuo, who was also referred to as Lao Zuo throughout the industry. That has been the most significant event that took place in the second quarter for Beike. We mourn his loss, not only because he has been a founder who set the mission for our company, but also because he was such an inspirational leader and a trailblazer who urged us to explore the future and create value for the housing industry. Lao Zuo has been an invaluable asset to Beike and Lianjia. His contribution and influence exceeded way beyond our organization.
With a clear focus on promoting industry progression, he took decisive actions as an industry practitioner, and he was a true leader who had urged us to reckon the more meaningful questions like how we can change the industry and how we create value for consumers and society. Lao Zuo has inspired us to self-improve, be visionary, enact positive changes, infuse value in everything we do, and always do the right things despite the difficulty. In memory of Lao Zuo, we will continue to make dedicated efforts to fulfill our mission to providing admirable service, joyful living. We are deeply grateful for and motivated by the condolences and support we received following Lao Zuo's passing.
We also appreciated Lao Zuo's family for their trust to the management by granting the irrevocable POA of the voting rights of their Class B ordinary shares to the company, Baihui Partnership, to which Mr. Yigang Shan and myself serve as initial partners. Lao Zuo's family, together with executive directors and core management members, have also agreed to a one-year voluntary share lockup of their holdings. After Lao Zuo's passing, we fully understand our goal and we will rise to face the challenge and will continue to create value for our consumers, service providers, employees, and shareholders. Turning to our business operations. Let's first take a look at the macro policy and market environment. In the past quarter, regulatory authorities gave praise to their views and opinions in various areas such as antitrust and data security, and issued a series of policies and guidance opinions in multiple industries.
During this period, we have been honored to have multiple opportunities to communicate directly with the relevant government authorities and have gained their recognition and respect for our efforts to improve the industry throughout the interactions. At the same time, we have taken the opportunity to look internally and engage in self-reflection and introspection. As a result, we have further solidified our ongoing belief that our business model would not be feasible without the benefits from being in such a great country and in this great era. As we move forward, we will continue to reflect our thoughts on the two key questions, namely, how we can change the industry and how we can take on more social responsibilities.
Regarding the housing industry, recently many cities and regions have introduced various cooling measures such as loan quotas, price caps, purchase restrictions, and mortgage interest rate hikes, all in an effort to help stabilize housing price, land price, and market expectations. These measures have begun to effectively chill the rapid expansion of the housing market in various cities. The path of existing home sales growth in many cities started to slow down since May. Similarly, the beginning of a market correction cycle and a more stabilized growth period for the company. The rapid development of China's economy over the past 30 years spurred fast growth in new and existing home sales, as well as demand for home renovation services. With overlapping and interconnected waves of the growth among segments in a time with more balanced housing demand and supply, and more stabilized market expectation for property price.
We expect three major structural trends and opportunities, including the industry's focus on shift from houses to customers, and from transactions to services. Demand from consumer has moved from home purchases to high-quality living. In the housing industry, relative inefficiencies continue to persist, with overall low user satisfaction and lingering problems such as lack of standardization, digitalization, and internet penetration. In light of this, we do not expect short-term market corrections to affect the continued long-term firm demand for housing consumers aspiration for more joyful living conditions. Our journey over the past 20 years tell us that market corrections create opportunities for quality upgrade, strategic thinking, and further development to improve competitive advantages in the future. In 2008, we introduced comprehensive scientific management for our organization. In 2011, we spearheaded authentic listing. In 2014, we initiated our nationwide expansion. In 2017, we launched the platform strategy.
Whenever the industry goes through a transformation phase, we ask ourselves if the industry would be the same with or without Beike and make decisions from a long-term perspective. Clearly, the industry would not be where it is today without these market corrections and the advancement that follow. During the industry inflection, we are again looking inward, like what we have been doing over the past 20 years to seek strengths and explore opportunities to withstand market volatilities and create lasting future value. We will prove to the market that we are building a capable, sustainable, and a social responsible enterprise that upholds an uplifting culture. We aim to create value for consumers and our industry despite the relative market volatility. We believe we can generate more and more values in the housing domain.
We hope our long-term commercial values that are built around home will continue to bring one-stop shop quality housing services for the 300 million+ families in China. Next, let's look at our business progress in the second quarter and the first half of 2021. The number of stores on our platform increased to 52,868 in the second quarter, representing 25% year-over-year growth. Approximately 30% of new store openings were from our current connected store owners. The number of stores with a trailing 12 months GTV of over CNY 50 million exceeded 19,500, accounting for 37% of the total stores, an increase of 10% quarter-over-quarter. In the first half of 2021, the two-year CAGR of GTV per store for Deyou stores and third-party connected stores were 20.3% and 15.1% respectively.
As we shifted our focus in the second quarter to talent retention of the peak recruiting season. In first quarter, we grew the number of agents by 20% year-over-year to 448,000. The agent attrition rate in connected stores on the platform dropped to 8.1% in the first half of 2021, from 9.6% in the first half of 2018. The enhanced store management and agent retention, we have 45% of connected stores to fulfill more than 30,000 store assistant positions. In the first half of 2021, we implemented agent spa initiatives for agents on our platform, which helped improve agent satisfaction and retention. In the second quarter, according to our survey, the number of agents that feel safe to work on the platform with others and compliance to platform rules increased by 12% compared with that at the end of 2020.
Average MAUs, including our MAU on platform apps and WeChat Mini Programs, reached 52.1 million in the second quarter, up 33.5% from which same period last year as we continue to improve our brand recognition. Turning to our existing home transaction services. According to Beike Research Institute, nationwide GTV of existing home transaction market in the first half of 2021 increased by 41% year-over-year. It decreased by 8% compared to second half of 2020. In comparison, GTV of existing home transaction on Beike's platform rose to CNY 1.33 trillion in the first half of 2021, representing 17.1% growth year-over-year. GTV of existing home transactions for connected stores increased by 89.6% year-over-year, reflecting our resilience during the early stage of the market downturn. In a fast-growing market, agent tend to focus on closing deals.
A market downturn, however, provides a better environment for us to refine management and enhance quality and efficiency. By the end of June 2021, we opened 287 contract service centers in 30 major cities in China, so that more customers can enjoy enhanced experience and transaction security during the signing process. We continue to promote our agent specialization strategy. As of June 30, 2021, our agent specialization strategy has covered over 61% of stores in 21 out of the 34 cities we operate in. In the second quarter, transactions completed collaboratively by specialized agents on our platform accounted for 40.4% of total transactions in the stores that implemented this strategy. A 7.7% increase from the first quarter, which indicated more frequent collaborations among our agents.
Most notably, in Chengdu, 21.7% of transactions were completed collaboratively among specialized agents, and store efficiency increased on average of 17% by the end of second quarter, comparing with stores not implementing specialization strategy. We also continue to develop new products to empower the agent to our platform. For example, we are testing a new application named Beike Pad, Beixing, which we pilot in Shanghai in the second quarter. Beike Pad is a digital interactive tool to help agent interact with customers, presenting structure and visualize information at a glance on a large pad screen when they are communicating face-to-face. Beike Pad significantly promoted standardized agent operations and enhanced offline information and services, prolonging overall customer interaction time by 29% and accelerating the process of building mutual trust between agent and customers.
With these benefits, by the end of second quarter, over 30% of agent have adopt Beike Pad as their main offline service tool in Shanghai. With respect to new home transactions, according to the National Bureau of Statistics, GTV of new home transaction market in the first half of 2021 increased by 39% year-over-year and was down 13% compared to the second half of 2020. In this context, GTV of new home transaction services reached CNY 841.7 billion in the first half of 2021, up 77% year-over-year. The GTV of connected stores increased by 85.4% year-over-year. During the past quarter, we continue to enrich online content for new homes by the end of June, we have enriched online content for all new home projects on our platform with a minimum of 100 description fields completed for each new home listings.
As part of commitment to providing authentic and comprehensive housing information, we also added a model describing unfavorable factors of new home projects, facilitating more informed purchasing decision. We are also making steady progress with our new home business conduct improvement plan. We endeavor to offer Five Don'ts commitment to developers, including no customer journey hijacking, no customers snatching, no brokering, no collection of consumer funds, no fake advisory. As of June 13, 97.4% of our partners/developers enter into Five Don'ts commitment agreement with us. Moving to our emerging services. In early June, we were thrilled to announce the acquisition of Shengdu Home Renovation. We first tapped into the home renovation industry in 2019 through the launch of our home renovation brand, Beiwo.
As we continue to deepen our understanding of this industry, we have developed an even stronger belief in the vast growth potential of China's home renovation market. The home renovation industry is of a considerable size, approximately CNY 7 trillion in total. However, there is scarcity of high-quality service providers and a lack of industry standardization and scientific management. As a result, it is difficult for the industry participants to effectively scale and earn profits. They have to fight for survival in the industry, incapable of meeting consumers' increasing high demand for quality. As housing transactions shift from new homes to existing homes, the industry customer base also changes from new home buyers to existing home buyers and then residents in existing homes, adding more complexity and cost for conventional renovation companies to acquire customers.
Despite the industry backdrop, Shengdu is one of the very few high-quality companies in this industry. Founded in 2002 and headquartered in Hangzhou, Shengdu has a long operating track record and a large customer base in Eastern China, along with an experienced management team and a significant industry know-how. In addition, as one of the earlier practitioners of the full service model in the home renovation industry in China, Shengdu excels not only in marketing and products, but also in supply chain management and execution. With strong management and robust internal control, Shengdu promotes the core value of taking good care of customers, which strongly resonates with ours. As the existing home market become more active, consumers' demand for high-quality products and service increase, and technologically empowerment grows. We believe that the industry is now at a critical turning point.
By seamlessly integrating the rich experience of Shengdu's team in the industry with our customer acquisition capabilities, self-developed standardized data infrastructure, and our belief and practice to promote development through vertical penetration and horizontal expansion, we are looking forward to making a difference for consumers and service providers in home renovation industry. At the same time, our in-house home renovation service, Beiwo Home Renovations, which is being polished as a minimum viable product as MVP, maintain robust growth in Beijing. Beiwo completed 834 home renovations in the second quarter, an increase of more than 10-fold year-over-year. R&D is also a top priority, and we continue to make key investment to upgrade our technology to further streamline our process and enhance digitalization.
For example, in the second quarter, we launched Home SaaS system version one that provides support through five modules, sales, BIM design, delivery, supply chain, and middle office management, further enhancing the end-to-end standardization and digitalization of our home renovation service. In summary, Beike is firmly upholding and supporting China's policy and local regulations opinion. Housing is for living, not for speculation. As we are also cooperating with regulatory authorities in dismantling false listing and discouraging speculative purchase. Which helps stabilize land price, housing price, and the market's expectations, and promotes the steady and healthy development of housing market. According to Beike Research Institute, with credit tighten and the control measures, such as price caps in various regions, overall home sales, I expect to slow down further in the second half of 2021.
Over 20 years operating history has proven that a market with balanced supply and demand provides the best foundation for our company's long-term development. Our founding principle to pursue a better industry structure, we will take on more social responsibilities. We will empower agents and foster a friendly environment for communities. We are committed to helping younger generation with affordable living through rental and other innovation solutions. We strive to fulfill more social responsibilities with a long-term goal to have industry progress, thereby creating long-term value for the broader communities. With that noting, we are approaching the first anniversary of Beike's U.S. IPO. I still remember the letter I wrote to the entire Beike family on the listing day last year. I mentioned in the letter that all institutions have their own ups and downs.
The calmer an institution behaves during glorious moments, the stronger and more capable it will become when weathering difficult times. Looking back, the capital market have been volatile in the past year and went through waves of fluctuation. As a witness of all these ups and downs, we are more firmly believing in the power of our mission, admirable services, joyful living. We will continue to always look inward to search for new areas of improvements, create values for the society as our outputs, and stay strong and optimistic all the time. Thank you all very much. With that, I would like to turn the call over to our CFO, Xu Tao, for a closer review on second quarter financials. Thank you.
Thank you, Stanley. Thank you, everyone, for joining us. I would like to provide a brief overview for the second quarter of 2021 financial results. Before we discuss financial results, I would like to iterate what we mentioned in last Q4 and the Q1 earnings call. Since our business operation had been seriously negatively impacted by COVID-19 outbreak in Q1 of last year, a meaningful portion of transaction had been shipped to Q2 of last year. We suggest that investors to look at and compare our financial performance as a whole for the first half of 2021 versus first half of 2020 to better reflect our business progress. Therefore, I will discuss both Q2 and the first half financial performance here.
Our net revenue increased by 20% to CNY 24.2 billion in Q2, from CNY 20.1 billion in the same period of last year, exceeding both high end of our guidance and the Street consensus. The increase was driven by the total GTV growth of 22.2% to CNY 1.2 trillion in Q2, from CNY 1.0 trillion in the same period of last year. For the first half of 2021, our net revenue increased by 64.6% to CNY 44.9 billion from CNY 27.3 billion in the same period of last year, driven by the total GTV growth of 72.3% to CNY 2.3 trillion from CNY 1.3 trillion in the same period of last year. In particular, our net revenue from existing home transaction services increased by 4.9% to CNY 9.6 billion in Q2, from CNY 9.2 billion in the same period of last year.
Primarily attributable to 11.7% increase in GTV of existing home transaction to CNY 652 billion in Q2, from CNY 383.5 billion in the same period of last year. For the first half of 2021, our net revenue from existing home transaction services increased by 57.9% to CNY 19.8 billion from CNY 12.6 billion in the same period of last year, driven by a 70.1% increase in GTV of existing home transaction to CNY 1.3 trillion from CNY 779.2 billion in the same period of last year. Our net revenue from new home transaction services increased by 31.9% to CNY 13.9 billion in Q2, from CNY 10.5 billion in the same period of last year, primarily attributable to an increase of 32.3% in GTV of new home transaction to CNY 498.3 billion in Q2, from CNY 376.6 billion in the same period of last year.
For the first half of 2021, our net revenue from new home transaction services increased by 70.4% to CNY 23.8 billion from CNY 14 billion in the same period of last year. Driven by a 17.7% increase in GTV of new home transaction to CNY 841.7 billion from CNY 493.1 billion in the same period of last year. Our net revenue from emerging and other services increased by 50.6% to CNY 0.7 billion in Q2 from CNY 0.4 billion in the same period of last year. The increase was primarily attributable to the increase of our penetration level in the company's financial services around the housing transaction services, and an increased number of home renovation units completed through the company's platform.
For the first half of 2021, our net revenue from emerging other services increased by 68.9% to CNY 1.2 billion from CNY 0.7 billion in the same period of last year. Cost of revenues increased by 38.6% year-over-year to CNY 18.8 billion in Q2, from CNY 13.6 billion in the same period of last year. Gross profit was CNY 5.3 billion in Q2, compared to CNY 6.6 billion in the same period of last year. Gross margin was 22.1% in Q2, compared to 32.5% in the same period of last year.
The decrease in gross margin was mainly because, one, margin in Q2 2021 had a more ordinary performance compared to the same period of last year, as a significant portion of transactions, especially existing home transaction, shift from Q1- Q2 last year, owing to COVID-19 pandemic, resulting a higher base of gross margin in that period. Two, in Q2 2021, the existing home sales market was affected by a series of market cooling measures that led to a relatively low contribution from the existing home transaction revenue to total net revenue of the company, resulting a lower total contribution margin compared to the same period of last year. Three, proportion of new home transaction completed by connected agent and other sales channel increased in Q2 compared to the same period of last year, resulting a lower new home contribution margin in Q2.
For the first half of 2021, gross profit increased by 43.9% to CNY 10.1 billion from CNY 7.1 billion in the same period of last year. Operating expenses were CNY 4.2 billion in Q2, compared to CNY 3.3 billion in the same period of last year. General and administrative expenses were CNY 2.2 billion in Q2, compared to CNY 2.0 billion in the same period of last year, mainly due to an increase in share-based compensation expenses. Sales and marketing expenses were CNY 1.2 billion in Q2, compared to CNY 788 million in the same period of last year, mainly due to increase of the online and offline advertisements and the branding campaigns, as well as increase of high in business development.
Research and development expenses were CNY 775 million in Q2, compared to CNY 524 million in the same period of last year, mainly due to the increase of highly experienced R&D personnel and increased share-based compensation expenses. Total share-based compensation expenses were CNY 436.2 million in Q2, compared to none in the same period of last year. Income from operation was CNY 1.1 billion in Q2, compared to CNY 3.3 billion in the same period of last year. Operating margin was at 4.6% in Q2, compared to 16.3% in the same period of last year, primarily due to the relatively higher gross profit margin in the second quarter of last year, as we discussed in gross profit. The less operating expenses incurred in that period due to travel and offline event restriction.
For the first half of 2021, income from operation increased by 28.6% to CNY 2.1 billion from CNY 1.7 billion in the same period of last year. Excluding non-GAAP items, our adjusted income from operation was CNY 1.7 billion in Q2, compared to CNY 3.4 billion in the same period of last year. Adjusted operating margin was at 6.9% in Q2, compared to 17.1% in the same period of last year. Adjusted EBITDA was CNY 2.6 billion in Q2, compared to CNY 3.8 billion the same period of last year. For the first half of 2021, adjusted income from operations increased by 64.6% to CNY 3.2 billion from CNY 2.0 billion in the same period of last year. Net income was CNY 1.1 billion in Q2, compared to CNY 2.8 billion in the same period of last year.
Excluding non-GAAP items, our adjusted net income was CNY 1.6 billion in Q2, compared to CNY 3.0 billion in the same period of last year. For the first half of 2021, adjusted net income increased by 68.8% to CNY 3.1 billion from CNY 1.9 billion in the same period of last year. Net income attributable to KE Holdings Inc ordinary shareholders increased by 5.6% to CNY 1.11 billion in Q2, from CNY 1.05 billion in the same period of last year. Adjusted net income attributable to KE Holdings Inc was CNY 1.6 billion in Q2, compared to adjusted net income attributable to KE Holdings Inc of CNY 2.9 billion in the same period of last year. For the first half of 2021, adjusted net income attributable to KE Holdings Inc increased by 68.7% to CNY 3.1 billion from CNY 1.9 billion in the same period of last year.
Diluted net income per ADS attributable to KE Holdings Inc ordinary shareholders was CNY 0.93 in Q2, compared to CNY 2.12 in the same period of last year. Adjusted diluted net income per ADS attributable to KE Holdings Inc's ordinary shareholders was CNY 1.37 in Q2, compared to CNY 2.23 in the same period of last year. As of June 30, 2022, one, the combined balance of our cash equivalent, restricted cash, and the short-term investment amounted to CNY 69.2 billion or $9.2 billion. Additionally, as of June 30, 2021, the balance of our long-term cash items, mainly include in long-term investments, amounted to CNY 8.8 billion or $1.4 billion. During the second quarter, a slew of city-specific policies and the severe market cooling measures were rolled out in order to effectively stabilize the land price, home price, and market expectations.
We expect the second half of this year will be one of the most stringent periods in past decades in terms of unprecedented conditions, such as intensified of policy launching, the variety of tools applied, and the number of regulatory involved. From supply side, three red lines to developers, two red lines to financial institution, concentrate land auction in 22 cities, and the reference price for home listing have impact both new home and existing home transactions. From demand side, tightening up the mortgage practice and the land lease approval period has significantly extended transaction cycle. While the issuance of reference price and the purchase restriction has led to cooling down of consumer expectations. Those measures will promote stable and healthy development of the real estate market in the long run, while they will also bring the short-term uncertainties.
As a result, we expect the real estate market will cool down moderately in the second half of this year. In the face of this challenge, we firmly uphold those policy and measures and support government to crack down on housing speculation in some certain overheated cities to stabilize the market. We believe the longing for the joyful living and better housing creates a strong demand from the customers. We have experienced several times of market ups and downs in past two decades. Nevertheless, the company always become better and stronger when it pass through those cycles. This is also the root cause why Beike and Lianjia could develop so well today. According to Beike Research Institute, nationwide GTV of existing home sales market is expected to fall over 40% year-over-year in the third quarter.
We will advance our agent specialization strategy in existing home sales sectors to ensure more business opportunities are accessible to our agents. Incentivize and support store owners to introduce multiple benefits in an effort to smooth out market cycle disruptors to agents' income and retain talent in the industry. Meanwhile, nationwide GTV of new home transaction market is expected to dip 5% year-over-year in the third quarter with the credit tightening and the purchase curbs intensifying. We will continue to invest in and develop professional new home agents, improving business conduct, and enriching online content for new home sales sector. We believe with market expectation stabilized after rounds of measures issued, as well as increasing sales to demand from developers in the traditional peak season, opportunities are still sufficient in new home sales sector for us in the second half of this year.
Based on above considerations, looking forward to the third quarter of 2021, we expect our net revenue to be between CNY 14.5 billion and CNY 15.5 billion, representing a decrease of approximately 24.6%-29.4% from the same quarter of 2020. This forecast concedes the potential impact of recent real estate-related policies and measures, and the company current and preliminary view of business situation and the market condition, which is subject to change. Nevertheless, although our top-line growth guidance has been slowing down, mainly due to external circumstance, we are confident that our strong moat in the collaborative network we uphold in quality services and the input efficiency will help us to continuously outperform the market. The foundation to push through the downturn depends on the faith of the team.
Whether we believe we have the ability to turn the corner, whether we believe that the sticking to our professionalism will eventually pay off, whether we believe the aspirational core will drive us out of stagnant phase. This kind of faith is what truly matters in difficult times. Based on above-mentioned market trends and our decades of experience going through several market downturns, as well as strong sense of mission to take on more social responsibility, the second half of this year, we will continue to put our efforts into company's infrastructure and emerging business. We will increase our support to agents to incubate them standing out in the industry and then go through this difficult time together.
We will also contribute more value to society by speeding up our exploration in home renovation and furnishing business, and applying our efforts in rental housing services for young people and new city dwellers. We recently foresee that we will commit more investment into our new business development in the second half of this year. Although our performance cannot go against the market general momentum in short term, we still strongly believe in what Lao Zuo mentioned in our prospectus. We focus on endogenous factors and minimize external influence, matching through noises and market volatilities. We believe it is our fundamental value rather than external circumstance that is the key to continued success of Beike. Compared to our near-term financial performance, we devote more efforts in developing and investing in our long-term capabilities, even though it might take time to achieve the financial returns on those investments.
In fact, the longer it takes and the more difficult it is, the more excited we become. That concludes our prepared remarks. We would like now to open the call to questions. Operator, please go ahead.
Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you will need to press star one on your telephone. To withdraw your question, please press the pound or hash key. For the benefit of all participants on today's call, please limit yourself to one question. If you have any additional questions, you can re-enter the queue. If you are going to ask the questions in Chinese, please follow with English translation. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. First question comes from the line of Liping Zhao of CICC. Please go ahead.
Hey, Stanley. [Non-English content] Good morning Stanley and Tao Xu my question is related to the commission rates, there were some rumors Tao Xu that there might be some limits on the agent commission rate so, how should we start or what would you comment on how should we expect the commission rate to incoming quarters? Thank you.
Thank you, Liping. This is Tao. Regarding the recent rumors, there have been lots of rumors about the in-home sales commission rate recently. Especially the WeChat moment screenshot, which was widely spread in many social network group two weeks ago. The rumor was sent by a junior person from a parasitic broker company, which is doing skip order in Shanghai, which was a false news with ulterior motives. We have been in close communication with the relevant authority and actively reporting related issue to them. The clear response from the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development is that so far there is no such information in restricting housing transaction commission fee. I hope make this clear. We also do think the real estate market is very different with K-12 education sectors, with a different intention from the regulator.
Being a fair and the public service is the key to education sector, while the housing for living, not for speculation, is the key for the housing sectors. Reducing the building up long-term mechanism in housing market to contain housing price from excessive hikes is the goal, rather than continuing housing transaction and the related services. On one hand, the stabilization of the housing price aim to suppress the wealth effects and wide impact of people's livelihood and their consumptions. On the other hand, recent policy are all aimed at supporting long-term healthy growth of the population and the improvements in the property structure. On the stable housing price and long-term supply demand balanced market to enable a wider range of consumer to live better and continuously improves our living conditions, which is a solid foundation of sustainable and healthy growth of population.
Therefore, we believe a market environment which is beneficial for Beike's long-term development remain unchanged. In summary, as I mentioned this point for several times, I want to make it clear again. The commission rate reflects the service quality, transaction efficiency, and the service commitment. Charging a reasonable rate without quality service commitment is an old proposition. It's like water without source and the tree without roots. Going forward, Beike will continuously invest our infrastructure and agents' professional training, offer more subsidy to support connect store development and agents' education in order to bring more value to the industry. We believe the overall commission rate on our platform will remain relatively stable. Hope this clarifies.
Thank you. Next question comes from the line of Piyush Mubayi from Goldman Sachs. Please ask your question.
Thank you for taking my question. Your company's been through 20 years in the real estate market in China and been through multiple cycles. We'd be grateful if you could take us through some of the past cycles that you've been through and how long it has taken you to come out of those cycles from a negative growth rate to a positive growth rate. If you could spell that through on a quarter by quarter basis, how many quarters can the negative growth rate be before you come out based on, let's say, the last two or three cycles?
That would be very useful for us to better understand. While we completely understand that you're in sync with the government objective for pricing and price stability in the market, if you could just go through where the vulnerable points have been, where the volumes have declined very sharply, where those points will start to stabilize, i.e., we start to see no further declines coming through. If you could take us through where you are in Shenzhen in the last quarter or next quarter, that would be great. Thank you.
This first half is a very booming season in 2021. After the over booming first quarter and the credit starts to tighten in the second quarter, and many regulator policy were introduced in some over 50 cities like Shenzhen, which had led to a start of the market downturn. For the second half of this year, we expect the overall market to continue cooling down. Currently, we reasonably foresee the property market will be under more pressure in Q3 compared to Q2 and the last Q4. In terms of credit supply, we expect regulation to remain tight in the second half of this year, resulting in continuously rising mortgage rates, further extending loan approval and the lending cycle. For existing home sales market, we expect will be largely affected in this Q3 by credit tightening and other regulations such as the reference price cap taking effect, causing overall existing home sales market GTV in the second half to slow down. In terms of the new home sales market, Q3 is a traditional weak season, coupled with impact from loan restriction and insufficient new home supply, we believe the new home sales might take a slowdown quarter-over-quarter in this Q3, but would recover in this Q4, supported by the seasonal strength. We expect second half GTV for the new home sales market to dip by 10% year-over-year for the market. Developers will be more reliant on the broker channels in second half of this year, given the slowing down of existing home transaction, which add to difficulties in developers' customer acquisition. We have a 20 years history, we have undergone at least seven times market cycles and ups and downs. I want to invite our Chairman Stanley to give some color on this for further elaboration.
[Non-English content]
Yeah, this is Stanley. Let me to answer your question in terms of the cyclical trend and how we view those kind of cyclical impact to our business. Stanley.
[Non-English content]
When we IPO, we actually have been discussed a lot with the investors in terms of how we can view our business cycle, right? Whether we should look at that in a quarterly basis or in an annually basis or in the even like a three years basis. We truly believe the three years is pretty much like a cyclical, which is more represent of our business cycle.
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I think in terms of our business momentum, a lot of, you know, the analysts and investors, you know, is not quite understand that. That is why when we facing the first cycle after our IPO, the people will feel unsafe on that. For me, I can explain that more detail terms of those kinds of volatility. When we look at each of the, no matter which city or which industry, they all have their own growth paths.
We look at the materiality or in a more macro of the models for our business. For example, in Beijing City, there are roughly like 8 million-9 million of the existing homes. If we look at the turnover rate is around like 1%, it normally represents a low level in the industry, and 4% normally represents it's more like a highly traded of the market. That actually also to be matched with the scalability within that kind of market. For the normal conditions, normally we think for the Beijing, it's about 25,000 of the transaction volume per month will be a more normalized of the level. If we look at a certain period, which is significantly surpassed those 25,000 volumes, the housing price actually will hike very quickly, followed by that, the transaction volume also will follow.
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In summary, saying each of the cities we have so-called very the normalized of the transaction volumes. If the transaction volume significantly has been surpassed or lower than those kind of the market normal condition, the price will follow by that to have a significant changes. When we look at the three-year cycle, normally the first year and the second year, the transaction volume will relatively stable. If there is a certain period, suddenly we see some of the transaction volume increase followed by the price increase, then the price will significantly increase compared with the first two of the years. Normally it will be much higher than the 8% of the level, which is pretty much in line with the GDP growth. What we normally monitor is approaching to the third year of every cycle, the price will significantly increased, and then the transaction volume also will be impact by that. The authorities normally will have the certain kind of measures came out with those kind of situation, and in order to cooling off of the price hike. When we look at the overall trend in the three-year cycle, normally it will be more like a very stable of the overall transaction volume, and with a normalized price condition in the market.
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That is why in the past decades, we look at the similar kind of pattern in the year of 2008, 2011, 2014, 2017, and now is the 2021. Approaching to those kind of year end, we will facing like a cyclical of the challenge. There has two of the characteristics I want to mention here as well. Firstly, the housing price normally will remain in a relatively stable in a relatively long time horizon, but will continue goes up more orderly based on those kind of demand. Secondly, the maturity in those kind of cities or areas also will be changing, followed by the maturity of the market. For example, maybe in the past of the cycle, 1% will be the stable level, but now may change to the 2% or even higher. In U.S. this year, we look at the 3.5%-4% of the turnover rate.
The price is still relatively stable, so that will be a very strong symbol for the maturity of this kind of industry.
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I want to reiterate what we have been mentioned in the prepared remarks. We think, and we truly believe in the housing industry, the biggest key role from the government's perspective remains the housing is for living in, not for speculation, right? The purpose behind that is definitely related to the stable price. The stable price doesn't mean it will be not increasing. It's more represent for the stable increasing, right? It does not imply any impact of other and bring other social matters. We have the example in the history. For example, like in Beijing, the last cycles bring the very serious matters is because of Beijing's housing price actually has been up 62% within a 16-month time. For Shanghai, also the similar kind of trend is the housing price up to 65% within 18 months times.
After that, it's all brought by the very serious of the management from the regulators. That also very good testament, right? We truly believe for this industry, the biggest political and the biggest thing is how we can remain the whole industry, especially the housing price stable. If we are not against this kind of trend, definitely we believe we can take a benefit on that. Those kind of supply and demand balance market, it also will be the best of the environment for the Beike's further development.
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I can give you more examples in terms of how we can pass through all those kind of the cycles and make ourselves stronger, right? As I mentioned in my prepared remarks, like our journeys over the past 20 years, tell us market corrections always create the opportunities. If you look at our experience, normally in the second year, when we experience those kind of cycles, we can create the new initiatives and doing the right thing even if it is difficult. For example, the cycle in 2008 and after that in 2009, we introduced a comprehensive scientific management. After 2011 cycle, in the year 2012, we promote authentic listings. After 2014 cycle, in the year 2015, we initiate our nationwide exploration, et cetera.
Every time when we go through the cycle, as I mentioned, we always think about two things as a priority. The first thing is whether we have already done all the things we have been done and whether we are worth of what we truly believe ourselves. Whether we are good enough to create value for the customers. Every time our answer is, "We can do better." That's the first things we always consider. The second thing is, during those kind of cycles, that give us opportunity how we look at the long-termism in the more deep nature. Make us more and more believe of those kind of long-termism will bring the long-term benefit back to the company.
In the year of 2021, when we entering this cycle, we also have more thinkings around the long-termism, for example, the services behind of the home or the housing topic and the renovation services, as well as how we can bring more social values when the companies become stronger and bigger, and how we can repay back to the local community. That's all the thinkings and the considerations that brought us for this cycle.
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That is why this year when we look at the Shenzhen's case, after the Shenfangli has been cracked down, as well as other things, bring in irrational of the market for Shenzhen. Meanwhile, we also look at the survey from the overall new home market.
This year's overall transaction volume has been up 30%. The average of the price for the new homes in China also has been surpassed CNY 10,000 per square of the level. That all bring enough of the reasons for the authorities continue to apply some of the management to make sure of the stable of the overall real estate market as well as the stable of the housing price. Again, when we talk about the housing price, it doesn't mean the house price will not go up. Behind that, we truly believe it's more like a moderate growth and with the moderate expectations. All the things behind the whole philosophies will be quite important to the, I would say, the long-term of the housing condition for the industry. Meanwhile, we also mentioned there are a lot of rumors.
Whether this, for example, agent industry should continue to exist or whether we'll have the further pressures, et cetera. We truly believe those kinds of rumors will be totally nonsense. As far as we can continue to provide the value to our customers as well as the platform participants. Definitely we can continue to bring the value to the communities, especially those kinds of the supply and demand balance market with very stable housing price is also the best of the environment for the Beike's further development. We will continue to support those kinds of policy and continue to create value based on those kinds of market environment. Thank you. That's all the philosophies and my thoughts behind your questions. Back to you, operator.
Thank you very much. Next questions will come from Steven Tsai from Morgan Stanley. Please ask your question.
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Good afternoon. Hello. Thank you for taking my questions. My question is related to the liquidity issue and concerns that some of the top developers and some smaller ones are facing. How should we size the potential impact on the account receivable risk for our new home sales business? Maybe how much bad debt provision you have recognized on your balance sheet so far. If this issue persists and escalates, will that affect the new home commission rates of our new home distribution business going forward? Thanks.
Okay. Thank you, Steven. For our collection, the status is very healthy. If we look at the DSO of the company, in 2018, 2019, and 2020, our GTV of new home increased from CNY 281 billion- CNY 746 billion and to CNY 1.4 trillion respectively. Our DSO were 117 days, 96 days, and 103 days respectively. You will see even the total top line year-over-year were doubled, our DSO continuously dropped, especially in this Q2, the GTV of the new home is almost CNY 500 billion. Our DSO further improved to 92 days. The reason behind that is that the company has a stringent revenue recognition criteria for new home sales. The company evaluates its whole payment rate for developers thoroughly and recognize the revenue for the high-risk developer on a cash basis under ASC accounting standard. That is, we do a very prudent revenue recognition.
The company also adopts diversified measures to ensure the payment collection safety, including adoption of litigation provision and other necessary measures. We see continuous improvement in the accounts receivable collections. In this year, we reasonably foresee some developers, they may encounter some difficult time, and some of them will identify the high-risk developers, I will not mention the name at this moment, platform. I can share with one number, the total receivable from the so-called high-risk developer accounts receivable will reduce from CNY 1.5 billion to around CNY 800 million by the end of the second quarter. Everything continuously improved. Also I want to share is, in Beike, we are currently with offer service for more than 7,000 projects and more than 240 developers across country end of Q2.
The concentration rate is still healthy, the top 10 developers account around over 25.5% of the transaction volume. From the top 100 developers, they account around 63%. We have a very low degree of business concentration and the bad debt risk for a single developer is relatively low. Also I want to share with you is the question is also related to our view to overall new home sales market trend. I think recent restriction hurdle of this new home transaction will ultimately impact the new home sales market. In order to improve the potential consumer conversation and the cash collection, the developer, they are more and more allocate resources and inventory to the channel sales such as Beike. The high demand of channel sales from developer will ultimately drive Beike's growth for our new home transaction service in the second quarter.
From Beike internally, we say the cash is king. We put tremendous efforts for the product verification and ensure all of the collection will be collected in time. Thank you.
Thank you for the question. The next question comes from Ashley Xu of Credit Suisse. Please ask your question.
Thanks management for taking my questions. Two from me. The first is about some initiative from some local government to establish a website where they require the brokers to upload authentic listings to that website. It's still ongoing efforts, so early stage, but just want to check on management view on how such efforts could potentially impact the way Beike functions or works. Second question is on regulations front, mainly both in antitrust and also data security. How will those regulations impact Beike? Thank you.
Thank you. Yes, we do aware some of news regarding the, for example, Shenzhen, they have so-called short life property platform. First, I want to clarify, the system is a regular e-government information system. It's not a so-called platform to do the transaction business. The key goal for this upgrade of the e-government system is to obtain the first-hand information on property listing to effectively carry out regulation as a frontline watchtower to prevent the market from overheating. Actually, this is nothing new. In addition to Shenzhen, we notice other cities who are leading in urban service also have the same practice. For example, in Hangzhou, we see they have the similar function and feature on their systems. This is just announce the new things.
Regardless of which new system or new format emerging, our key focus will always be a better customer experience, transaction efficiency, and whether the listing price is authentic. Our underlying operating logic is highly consistent with this so-called e-government systems, because it will further enforce authentic listing and facilitate the cooperation among agents. This is also in line with our ACN because we say the ACN is the culture of the transparency, collaboration, and shared success. The way in past decades, we introduce and then you see to do the authentic listing. While those companies rely on the fake listing, I'm not mentioning the company names here, and do the skipping order, will face challenges. That's quite obviously who will benefit and who will face challenges. We believe the launch of such system will promote the healthy competition in the industry.
We are not worried about this, and we are fully uphold and support this. Your second question is for antitrust. Okay. Regarding the antitrust, first, we would like to clarify again, the news from Reuters related to Beike two months ago was a fake news. Currently, the company is not under any formal investigation related to antitrust issue, especially after we timely submit our self-inspection report like other 33 platform companies in May. Beike consistently operates within the bounds of laws, regulations, and rules. We always prioritize the interest of users and spare no effort to achieve the winning results through the cooperative mechanism. We insist and are committed to promoting the healthy development of the industry, involved in solving inauthentic property listing, and striving to be an outstanding company in full compliance with the rules and the regulations.
The good thing is, through this round of frequent communication with government authority and the State Administration for Market Regulation, as a corporate citizen, we are even more determined to take social responsibility as a top priority. At the same time, the government also gain a better understanding of Beike's business model, and our contribution we have made to help industry grow and iterate in past 20 years. In addition, our diligent attitude in handling the self-inspection and other related matters, and the efforts and the contribution we made to industry progress was well-recognized by the authority. For example, our investment brand of CNY 700 million in Shenzhen for brand of Weitang, offers affordable and quality rental services for the young generation living in large and the middle cities, and create more social value for local communication.
One of its project has been featured and reported by CCTV News, "Xinwen Lianbo ", on 31st July, which demonstrates highly recognition from the authority. Okay, I hope this clarifies your question.
Thank you. We're now approaching the end of the conference call. I'll now turn the call over to your speaker host today, Mr. Matthew Zhao, for closing remarks.
Thank you, operator. Thank you once again, everybody, for joining us today. If you have any 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. We look forward to speaking with you again next quarter. Thank you and goodbye.