China’s CNY6.5 trillion pre-owned home market is attracting growing interest and rising levels of capital. In the latest buyout of a company involved in the sector, in late February Shenzhen-listed Kunming Department Store spent CNY6.18 billion on a 94% stake in property agency Weiye 5i5j Group, through a share swap and cash, with the remaining 6% stake for CNY378 million in a share transfer deal. The total CNY6.56 billion buyout of the country’s second largest property agent valued the company at 32.8 times its 2015 net profit. The deal is still pending due to the securities regulator’s inquiry into whether it is a back-door listing. On January 3, Shenzhen-listed Hubei Guochuang Hi-tech Material Co, an asphalt producer, said it planned to buy Qfang.com, an agent in Shenzhen, outright for CNY3.8 billion. In another deal, Sunac China Holdings bought a 6.25% stake in China’s largest home agent Homelink, for CNY2.6 billion, valuing the online-to-offline agency network at CNY41.6 billion, or 51.4 times its 2015 net profit. The purchase came just nine months after Homelink’s series-B fundraising, when a private equity fund owned by China Renaissance, Baidu and Tencent valued the company at just CNY36.8 billion. In 2015, its after-tax profit surged nearly ten-fold from 2014 to CNY809 million, while last year Homelink handled more than CNY1 trillion worth of transactions, earning an estimated net profit of CNY1.14 billion. Homelink’s core business remains as a pre-owned property agent, which charges 2.7% of any transaction value as commission – the highest of any Chinese agent. The company runs some 8,000 outlets across 28 cities with 130,000 agents. In Beijing alone, it claims over 60% of the market. 5i5j runs 2,215 stores in 15 cities, with 45,000 agents. Experts are predicting the trend to buy second-hand homes will continue to grow in major cities too, the South China Morning Post reports. In Beijing, pre-owned home transactions were 5.67 times that of new home sales last year, according to Centaline Property, and in Shanghai it was worth four times.