Group helps Chinese expats find apartments in China

Personal experience led Gehong Wang to start the Chinese Young Professionals Apartments (CYPA), a website that helps professionals find places to live in China.

Wang had lived in Denver, New York and Washington as a student and as a worker. First an engineer, Wang eventually obtained an MBA from Shanghai Jiao Tong University. After serving as a research scholar in Denver, Wang established a real estate investment trust (REIT) business.

Several years removed from living on the mainland, Wang found himself heading back to China and in need of an apartment.

"The prices were high, and I discovered that China had changed a lot in the time I had been away," he said. "Many of my friends had left or relocated, and I had to look for an apartment in areas that I was unfamiliar with when I lived in China previously."

It struck Wang that he probably wasn't the only Chinese expat in that situation. That led him to develop the CYPA website in both English and Mandarin to not only help Chinese expats returning but also foreign workers suddenly faced with relocating to China.

"About 70 percent of our clients are Chinese expats who may have left to study or work in the US or another foreign country for a time," Wang said.

The website, now 3 years old, has been developed into an app for mobile devices. It enables a user to call up an area in Beijing, for example, where CYPA has apartments for rent.

"They can quickly search the neighborhood for restaurants, stores or other services," Wang said. "We want to build a community so someone would also be able to contact a resident of the building or neighborhood and begin the process of making friends."

Wang has managed to turn CYPA into a full-service company that not only connects renters and landlords but also supplies its own apartments in China's major cities, like Beijing, Hangzhou, Shanghai and Shenzhen.

"We can manage a building for a developer or real estate company if they need that service. But we also like to develop our own properties," he said. CYPA is also able to connect potential roommates who may want to share an apartment.

In 2014, China Young Professionals Apartments unveiled a new flagship apartment building in Beijing that was constructed to cater to China's young white-collar professionals. The building is designed to be green and foster a sense of community between the young people who reside there. That means the building has a number of common spaces where residents can get to know their neighbors and mingle. These spaces include a rooftop garden, a communal wine cellar and a gym.

The building is located in Beijing's Chaoyang District, which includes many foreign embassies and the city's growing central business district, which always seem to attract young professionals.

Seed money for CYPA was provided by SAIF Partners, a fairly well known Chinese private-equity firm, according to Wang, who described the firm as an "angel" investor. Another investor is the Huazhu Hotels Group Ltd, formerly known as China Lodging Group Limited, Wang said.

"Eventually, we would like to do an IPO (initial public offering) in the US and then expand here," he said.

paulwelitzkin@chinadailyusa.com