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Hong Kong property agent Ricacorp gains market share for two straight years under chairmanship of Janet Shih after taking down fake listings
- Shih believes the move – the first by a Hong Kong agency – built trust and attracted new customers searching for homes online
- Previously it was common to find some listings were bait to attract more buyers to the various platforms with fake prices that were lower than the market average
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Ricacorp Properties, the third-largest property agent in Hong Kong, has seen its market share increase for two consecutive years while being chaired by Janet Shih.
She puts this down to a bold move to remove thousands of fake and duplicate listings – a widespread industry practice – from the agency’s website in a bid to gain the trust of younger customers.
“It means our campaign won the confidence of home seekers and saves them from wasting their time in looking for properties,” said Shih, the daughter of Centaline Property Agency chairman Shih Wing-ching.
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Shih succeeded her father as chairman of Ricacorp, a wholly owned subsidiary of Centaline Group, on January 1, 2019.
She has strived to enhance the professionalism and integrity of the firm’s agents since 2018.
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“I noticed the market needed to change as most home seekers, particularly 20 to 40 year-olds, will first do online search,” she said in an interview. “As our scale is smaller, we have to launch a new breakthrough in the industry to create noise. We want to be the younger generation’s first choice when they need an agent.”
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