Danke stops property listings on its rental app in China as it beats back talk of viability less than a year after New York stock sale

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The smartphone application of the Beijing-based company, formally known as Phoenix Tree Holding, has stopped listing vacant homes available for rent, their prices, photos or any other information

Danke’s executives could not be reached for comment on Christmas Day, a normal business and market day in China

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An advertisement promoting Danke Apartment on December 21, 2018 in Beijing. Photo: VCG/VCG via Getty Images

Daniel RenandPearl Liu

Published: 10:30pm, 25 Dec 2020Updated: 11:31pm, 25 Dec 2020

Danke, battling speculations about its financial viability less than a year after its New York initial public offering, appears to have ceased operating its home rental referral platform in China.

The smartphone application of the Beijing-based company, formally known as Phoenix Tree Holding, has stopped listing vacant homes available for rent, their prices, photos or any other information. Danke’s executives could not be reached for comment on Christmas Day, a normal business and market day in China.

Founded in 2015, Danke runs a business model similar to WeWork, but for residential property instead of office space. It rents apartments from landlords on a long-term basis, renovates and splits them into smaller units and then sublets them to tenants. The firm, which is yet to make a profit, operated more than 415,000 flats in 13 cities across China at the end of March, according to its latest quarterly report.

Danke, which means “egg shells” in Chinese, billed itself as one of China’s largest co-living platform in its stock sale prospectus, mainly serving young urban professionals who cannot afford to buy expensive homes or pay large deposits because of a lack of savings. It takes a year’s rent upfront from tenants, while paying landlords on a monthly or quarterly basis. The company even arranged loans for tenants through its partner banks like WeBank – backed by China’s dominant social network operator and games publisher Tencent Holdings – who then repay the borrowings on a monthly basis.

A screen shot of Danke’s smartphone app, which has stopped listing information of residential property available for rent, as of December 25, 2020. Photo: Danke

The incident appears to be the latest woe for Danke, after being caught in November between angry landlords who were owed their rent and sublet tenants who had paid their deposits but were evicted.