(Yicai Global) Feb. 20 -- Kuaishou, the Chinese rival to TikTok, shifted CNY10 billion (USD1.4 billion) worth of properties through its new livestreaming real estate arm in 2022.

Kuaishou Ideal Home, which uses live sales hosts as ‘brokers,’ is proving to be a success. It is the first time that the Beijing-based firm has released its earnings from real estate since the unit was set up in 2019.

The new sales model helped Kuaishou shift over 130 houses each year between 2019 and 2021, according to the person in charge of the subsidiary during this period.

Kuaishou Ideal Home is shifting focus to ‘new’ first-tier cities, which are contenders to major cities such as Beijing and Shanghai, as well as the smaller second and third-tier cities, company director Liu Xiao said on Feb. 17. As the property business grows, it will attract more advertising to the Kuaishou platform, which has a high margin.

Real estate is a complex business with a large industrial chain and a number of cooperating groups. Many factors need to be considered when dealing in real estate, such as sales volumes in newly build and pre-owned home markets, the share of cities’ gross domestic product and the impact on the macro economy. Therefore Kuaishou is very cautious when it comes to finding partners.

Kuaishou earned over CNY23 million (USD3.4 million) in the third quarter, half of which was from online adverts, 38.7 percent from livestreaming, and other services, including e-commerce, accounted for 11.2 percent, according to the firm’s third quarter earnings report.

Editors: Shi Yi, Kim Taylor