Battle of the real estate brokerages pits physical vs virtual

Traditional brick-and-mortar property brokerages have entrenched flaws in how they do business, as their rivals in the Internet industry rightly point out, but replacement is not on the horizon either, reports Zheng Yangpeng.

There was no shortage of bad news for property brokerages last year and just when the industry thought it had seen the worst of it, more kept coming this year.

Last month, Century 21 China Real Estate, a real estate brokerage and the exclusive franchisee for the US-based Century 21 brand in China, was delisted from the New York Stock Exchange after persistent failure to meet the bourse's minimum capitalization requirements. The capitalization of the company ended at a miserable $10.11 million, a far cry from its peak of $4 billion.