For many university graduates, finding a rental home is their first lesson in independent living. The traditional long-term rental market, often plagued by information asymmetry, fake listings, and disputes, makes the "first rental experience" for young people typically fraught with tension and anxiety. How to ensure young people can afford and live safely in housing has become a critical issue for urban talent retention. Addressing this pain point of the graduation season, on June 30th, KE Holdings Inc.'s (BEKE-W) "Worry-Free Lease" service officially held a launch event in Chengdu. The event analyzed common risk scenarios in graduate housing, discussed how to protect "rental novices," and introduced a new "483 Quality Service System."
KE Holdings Inc. (BEKE-W) "This represents the most significant restructuring and upgrade of the service system since the Worry-Free Lease service landed in Chengdu five years ago," said Liu Li, General Manager of KE Holdings' Worry-Free Lease Southwest Region, at the event, indicating that KE Holdings will provide greater service certainty for both tenants and property owners in the future. Concurrently, at the launch, the "Youth Rental Housing Ten Million Subsidy Campaign" was initiated. Targeting graduates from the 2024-2026 cohorts, the campaign offers benefits such as zero-deposit monthly payments and a 30% discount on service fees, aiming to ease the financial burden of settling in Chengdu for young people with high-certainty service guarantees and tangible financial support.
The "First Rental" Budget
For newcomers to the workforce, the traditional rental requirement of "one month's deposit plus three months' rent in advance" and the payment of agency fees represent the most significant financial burden for a first-time rental. The core purpose of the launched "Youth Rental Housing Ten Million Subsidy Campaign" is precisely to alleviate this burden for graduates. According to information released at the event, Chengdu KE Holdings' Worry-Free Lease has introduced an unprecedented combination of discounts for the graduation season: the "zero-deposit monthly payment" benefit eases initial cash flow pressure, service fee discounts reduce ongoing living costs, and the distribution of essential moving and cleaning vouchers makes renting one's first home "worry-free from the start."
A set of "budget calculations" presented at the event used two highly contrasting data points to vividly illustrate the value of this ten million yuan subsidy. The first is the "lowered threshold" brought by the new rental model, significantly reducing the upfront capital required for a first rental. Taking a property with a monthly rent of 2,000 yuan as an example, under the traditional model, the "one month's deposit plus three months' rent" requirement alone means 8,000 yuan in tied-up cash. Adding an extra agency fee of 1,000 to 2,000 yuan means nearly 10,000 yuan needs to be paid upfront before moving in. Under the Worry-Free Lease model, thanks to the "zero-deposit monthly payment" channel, graduates only need to pay the first month's rent of 2,000 yuan and the monthly service fee to move in easily, reducing the initial payment threshold by nearly 80%.
The second is the "direct cost reduction" brought by the ten million yuan subsidy, genuinely lowering essential expenses throughout the rental cycle. Using the same property as an example, under the conventional model, one would bear 2,400 yuan in annual service fees (paid monthly), plus the cost of a deposit waiver voucher (19.9 yuan), and essential moving and cleaning expenses (each priced at 99 yuan), resulting in a first-year total mandatory cost of 2,618 yuan. After the launch of the Youth Ten Million Subsidy Plan, besides waiving the deposit voucher purchase fee, one moving and one cleaning service are provided for free. The annual apartment service fee is directly discounted by 30% to 1,680 yuan. This combination of additions and subtractions can save graduates at least 938 yuan in cash expenditure.
A relevant person in charge of Chengdu KE Holdings' Worry-Free Lease stated at the event that this is the fifth year of deepening the "New Youth Plan," and the scale of subsidies released is the largest in the past five years. It is reported that this targeted support activity will continue until September 30th this year, aiming to accompany young people as they integrate into the city more "pressure-free" with a guarantee of certainty.
Enhanced Services
If the "zero-deposit monthly payment" and ten million yuan subsidy lower the barrier to settling in Chengdu for young people, then the newly launched "483 Service System" represents KE Holdings' structural reshaping of non-standard delivery in long-term rentals. Addressing the industry pain point of difficult service implementation for dispersed housing listings, KE Holdings has comprehensively converted potential risks into written quality guarantees.
"Worry-Free Renting, Fake Listings Compensated 100x," "Service Assurance, Dissatisfaction Leads to Compensation," "Rental Safety, Advance Compensation," and "Refund Upon Lease End, Processed Within 3 Days" are the upgraded Assured Service Commitments released. Among the "4 Major Assured Commitments," "Fake Listings Compensated 100x" directly tackles the issue of false advertising; the self-penalty mechanism of "refunds processed within 3 days, 100 yuan compensation per day for delay," combined with security funds of up to 600,000 yuan per property, completely eliminates young people's concerns about deposit withholding and living safety.
The "8 Tenant Service Rights" cover various service nodes—move-in delivery, safety inspections, dedicated property manager, smart door lock, zero-deposit monthly payment, maintenance guarantee, hassle-free lease change, and lease transfer fee reduction. This service upgrade specifically standardizes touchpoints like "zero-deposit monthly payment, lease change fee reduction, dedicated property manager" and, through an expedited mechanism of "30-minute response to emergencies, on-site within 2 hours," puts an end to service blind spots like "unattended or delayed repairs."
Furthermore, to precisely match the lifestyle needs of young people, KE Holdings' Worry-Free Lease provides "3 Value-Added Services"—upgraded dedicated cleaning, worry-free broadband, and pet-friendly policies—further enriching the scenario-based rental ecosystem.
However, at the launch event, some media questioned: "If a high-value compensation claim arises, can the compensation guarantee in the rental service commitment be fulfilled? If a service dispute arises, will the rights clauses become a PR stunt with 'final interpretation rights belonging to the platform'?" In response, the head of KE Holdings' Southwest Region stated frankly on-site: "The confidence to provide consumers with more enhanced services and make strict commitments against ourselves comes from the rigorously enforced service standards and systems in the background. We must use the platform's certainty to shoulder all the uncertainties of the market. This rigid constraint of internalizing risk and leaving certainty for consumers is precisely the underlying logic of this transformation."
Continuously "Troubleshooting and Filling Gaps"
During the roundtable discussion at the launch event, instead of reciting product terms, the experiences of four real tenants were used to comprehensively showcase the various "deep pitfalls" one might encounter during the "first rental." From the perspective of rental market risks, upgraded fraud tactics and fake listings have become the greatest threats. Tenant Liu Hao (pseudonym) once fell victim to a scheme by a professional sub-landlord, losing a year's rent to a 3,500 yuan low-priced "trendy apartment" and a forged property certificate; while tenant Zhao Ying (pseudonym) reported being lured by a "beautified fake listing" to view a property and was forced to pay a viewing fee.
Ensuring rental safety requires strict transaction regulation. Now, KE Holdings' Worry-Free Lease has fully launched a "Sub-landlord Fraud Prevention System," which automatically triggers warnings and mandates manual review for individuals renting out multiple properties. Each contract signing is linked to the public security system for facial recognition verification. Simultaneously, relying on VR real-scene recording to ensure listings are "as seen," and establishing the iron rule of "strictly prohibiting viewing fees," technology and systems are used to secure transactions.
In the "thousand homes, thousand faces" rental service, there are also unavoidable difficulties and traps. At the launch event, tenant Li Wenbo (pseudonym) reported facing the dilemma of forced contract termination and deposit deduction due to a sudden cross-district relocation by his company; while tenant Su Xiao (pseudonym) suffered full-body allergic reactions after moving in because the previous tenant secretly kept a pet.
Identifying new issues in rental services leads to new solutions. Addressing the pain of "lease changes," KE Holdings Chengdu launched a dedicated "Lease Conversion Right." During the trial run in May alone, it reduced costs by up to 1 million yuan for 980 users. Similarly, to break the negative cycle of "landlord prohibits pets - tenant secretly keeps pets," KE Holdings launched "pet-friendly apartments" in Chengdu. By requiring tenants to sign a "Pet Keeping Commitment" and establishing "Pet Damage Insurance" as a dual safeguard, a new pet-friendly rental ecosystem is being built.
2026 marks the fifth year since KE Holdings' Worry-Free Lease landed in Chengdu. As the competitive logic of the housing rental industry shifts from "scale dividends" to "professional service capability," the core value of a platform lies in truly delivering service "certainty." By lowering barriers with a ten million yuan subsidy and providing long-term service guarantees through the "483 Service System," KE Holdings' Worry-Free Lease is using this rental experiment implemented in Chengdu to build a new starting point with greater dignity and security for new Chengdu residents' "first home in life."
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