(Yicai Global) Aug. 24 -- Just a week after listing in the US, Chinese property brokerage KE Holdings had a market capitalization bigger than China's largest real estate developer.

Shares of KE [NYSE: BEKE] ended trading at USD41.87 each on Aug. 21, more than double their initial public offering price of USD20, giving the Beijing-based company a market capitalization of USD47.2 billion. That compares with Vanke's [SHE: 000002] CNY309.5 billion (USD44.8 billion).

KE's platform, Beike Zhaofang, had turnover of CNY2.1 trillion (USD303.8 billion) last year, making the firm China's biggest property broker and trader as well as the second-largest commercial platform after e-commerce giant Alibaba. It mainly deals in new and secondhand homes, but is also trying to expand into interior decoration, finance and other upstream and downstream areas.

The world is awash with liquidity and is desperate for growth companies, Yang Xianling, founder of Freedom Research Institute, told Yicai Global. That means funds tend to favor companies like KE, an industry leader with excellent growth performance and a proven business model, he added.

One of China's biggest real estate firms, Beijing Homelink Real Estate Brokerage, also known as Lianjia, launched Beike in 2018 as its online property brokerage platform. The platform now has 456,000 agents and operates a total of 42,000 outlets in 103 cities in China.

KE's revenue climbed to CNY46 billion last year from CNY25.5 billion in 2017, with losses of CNY538 million, CNY428 million and CNY2.2 billion in the three years. Its first-quarter net loss this year was CNY1.2 billion.

China has the world's biggest housing market, China Insights Consultancy said in a recent report, adding that the total gross trade volume of home sales and rental through property brokerage services is expected to reach CNY19.1 trillion by 2024, with a penetration rate of 62.2 percent.

But KE is not without market competitors. “Though KE Holdings is the leader in the property brokerage sector, it still faces a lot of peer competitors and strong cross-industry rivals due to low barriers for entry into their industries,” Futu Securities said in a note.

Editors: Zhang Yushuo, Peter Thomas