China's property management industry is undergoing reconstruction.

In the past, property management companies relied heavily on real estate developers for growth. As the real estate market enters an adjustment period, this business model dependent on parent companies has become unsustainable, leaving the entire property management industry facing severe operational pressures.

Data from ONEWO's 2025 interim financial report clearly demonstrates an industry turning point. The company's core net profit grew 10.8% year-on-year, significantly exceeding revenue growth. Behind this lies fundamental changes in business structure: related-party business from developers has dropped to just 6.5%, while independently acquired recurring business accounts for nearly 90%.

ONEWO's Chief Financial Officer Wang Xubin stated that the positive scissor gap has been basically achieved based on interim report data. He noted that based on interim results, both revenue and core net profit growth rates are expected to expand further for the full year 2025.

This indicates that leading property management companies are fundamentally changing their business models to adapt to the new market environment. As ONEWO Chairman Zhu Baoquan said, "Whether we can quickly find our own independent development path has been the most important point over the past three years." This is not merely a simple transformation, but a complete reconstruction of the industry's underlying logic.

ONEWO's "flexible pricing" model represents a true revolution, not in price fluctuation, but as an attempt at contract renegotiation. It bypasses developers as historical intermediaries, attempting to establish direct, transparent relationships of rights and responsibilities between property management companies and property owners.

ONEWO Chief Operating Officer He Shuhua summarized the core of this transformation in three points: shifting from "headcount" to "workload calculation," providing standards for negotiation, and making services quantifiable. These three points essentially accomplish the same thing: completely opening the black box that was previously packaged as property management fees, clearly displaying every component to the other party of the contract - the property owners.

This is an extremely courageous move. It means property management companies are abandoning the ambiguous profit margins brought by information asymmetry, placing themselves under property owners' scrutiny.

In Chongqing's Hanlin Academy project, the government price limit was 1.9 yuan, property owners expected 1.3 yuan, but the final pricing was 2.28 yuan, achieving nearly 100% approval from property owner votes.

"We believe flexible pricing... has formed a dynamic balance among property owners, property management companies, and government regarding pricing," He Shuhua emphasized. This marks property management companies' transition from passive price accepters to active value negotiators, representing the first and hardest cornerstone of independent development.

A deeper revolution is occurring in efficiency reconstruction of "people." After visiting multiple robotics companies, Zhu Baoquan concluded that "90% machines plus 10% human labor" is optimal. When a robot can complete 90% of security patrols, 90% of cleaning, and 90% of maintenance inspections, the remaining 10% of "finishing" work will give birth to an entirely new position - "hybrid workers."

This means the traditional pyramid organizational structure of property management companies based on professional division of labor will be completely dismantled. Future frontline property management employees will no longer be single-skilled cogs, but technical workers with multiple finishing capabilities who can efficiently collaborate with machines.

This will be disruptive to the entire industry's employment standards, training systems, and compensation structures. In the first half of the year, ONEWO's management expense net decreased by nearly 80 million yuan. Behind this is the deployment of intelligent agents like financial AI "Caiyun Fairy" and HR assistant "Nezha."

Zhu Baoquan emphasized this must be a "win-win-win" situation: companies improve efficiency, efficiency gains must be transferred to customers, while employees find new development directions through job transfer training. In the first half of the year, over 685 ONEWO employees completed job transfers.

The property management industry's past predicament lay in its value creation being firmly locked within "community walls." When main business profits became razor-thin, all companies began competing on the narrow bridge of "value-added services," but their imagination was often limited to shallow services like housekeeping and group purchases.

ONEWO's exploration involves breaking this invisible wall, transforming from a community service provider to a broader "asset service provider" and "city service provider."

ONEWO's strategic layout clearly demonstrates this trajectory. Wang Xubin revealed that future investments will mainly focus on three key areas: selective Diecheng acquisitions, benchmark projects for commercial renovation, and deepening technology investments.

At the second headquarters in Wuhan, the shared service center has begun providing remote outsourcing services for finance, HR, and even IT to major enterprises like Tencent and China FAW. Energy management, this new high-value-added track, has also been established as a core competency.

Even in handling the thorny issue of heavy assets left by the parent company, ONEWO has demonstrated professional asset operation capabilities. ONEWO Deputy General Manager Ye Fei introduced that the company established a special working group called "Jingzhe" (Awakening of Insects), symbolizing "renewed vitality and emergence from the ground."

Its strategy is clear and pragmatic: for sales-type assets, "sell as much as possible under the principle of overall profit and loss ≥ 0"; for operational assets, focus on "refined operations." The Wuhan Xintang project achieved remarkable results with just 5 million yuan in micro-renovations, increasing foot traffic by 26% and sales by 31%.

Whether enterprise services, energy management, or asset operations, their essence lies in escaping the single, low-margin revenue model of property management fees. By productizing and externalizing accumulated capabilities, ONEWO is entering a broader, more profitable market.

This crisis in the property management industry represents a brutal "stress test." It is selecting two types of companies: "old property management" companies stuck in old identities, and "new species" that actively deconstruct and reshape themselves.

From rebuilding contracts to redefining people, then reshaping boundaries, the old identity of dependent, ambiguous, labor-intensive "property managers" is being terminated; an independent, transparent, technology-driven asset service operator is being born. This, perhaps, is the endgame for property management.