At present, the existing housing market is leading industry development. National policies such as trade-in programs and good houses continue to gain momentum, while residents' demand for upgraded living quality is also rising. The renovation market for old homes is releasing trillion-yuan dividends and has become a core engine of industry growth. On January 26, Beijing Business Today learned that Oppein has launched Qinglan Xiaozhu, a professional old-home renovation brand, entering the trillion-yuan blue ocean of old-home renovation. In fact, as the existing housing era deepens, urban renewal policies continue to strengthen, good house construction standards are implemented, and residents' demand for improved living quality is released, more and more home furnishing enterprises are entering the field in an attempt to capture market share.

Industry experts pointed out that the old-home renovation market has entered a new stage of scaled development, and policy and demand dividends will continue to be released over the long term. In the future, enterprises with supply chain integration, standardized service, and localized operation capabilities will gain advantages. As the industry ecosystem continues to improve, the potential of the old-home renovation market will be fully released, injecting lasting momentum into the high-quality development of the home furnishing industry.

Enterprises are laying out multiple points

The arrival of the existing housing era has made the old-home renovation market a new growth pole for the home furnishing industry. Home furnishing enterprises have entered the field one after another, laying out the track based on their respective strengths.

Oppein Group has officially launched its new brand Qinglan Xiaozhu to enter the old-home renovation market. Beijing Business Today learned that Qinglan Xiaozhu uses a community small-store model featuring light investment and quick response, focusing on high-frequency old-home renovation categories such as kitchens, bathrooms, and flooring materials to provide consumers with one-stop professional renovation services. Regarding the future development plan of Qinglan Xiaozhu, Beijing Business Today sent an interview outline to Oppein Group, but the company had not responded as of press time. Hu Bin, head of Oppein's old-home renovation project, introduced that in the 100 Stores in 100 Days expansion plan launched at the end of 2025, the brand implemented Qinglan Xiaozhu's systematic business model and laid out stores in more than 100 cities nationwide within three months.

In fact, the introduction of policies such as urban renewal and renovation of old residential communities has provided huge incremental space for the home furnishing industry, and many home furnishing enterprises have entered the field. GoldenHome has launched a small-store model that stays close to community streets and facilitates last-mile services such as home decoration, old-home renovation, partial renewal, and quick repair. ZBOM Home, relying on its whole-home integration strategy, integrates cross-category resources and provides whole-house solutions such as old-home renovation and partial remodeling. The Steady Plan public welfare project initiated by the Beike Foundation aims to install wall-mounted handrails and warning stickers in corridors of some old residential communities in Beijing, helping improve travel safety for elderly residents in the community.

Wang Rui, secretary-general of the Old-Home Renovation Special Committee of the Guangdong Customized Home Furnishing Association, pointed out that it has become an inevitable trend for home furnishing enterprises to engage in old-home renovation. The essence of the renovation business is to solve problems for users, and the core lies in building trust to unlock customers' lifetime value, thereby achieving sustainable compound growth. This is an inevitable evolutionary path from hunting-style transactions to intensive farming-style operations.

Policy and demand resonate

As consumers' demand for living quality upgrades from having a place to live to living well, the development model of the home furnishing industry has shifted from simple scale expansion to the core track of quality improvement. EO Intelligence predicted in its 2025 China Home Service Industry Observation Report that the compound annual growth rate of the home furnishing industry over the next five years will be about 2.8. percent, and the market size will reach 5.17 trillion yuan by 2028. Behind the market size growth are the dual drivers of policy guidance and market demand.

In May 2025, the Opinions of the General Office of the CPC Central Committee and the General Office of the State Council on Continuously Promoting Urban Renewal Actions were released. The document clearly called for advancing renovation and improvement of old urban residential communities, upgrading aging gas and other pipelines in residential communities, strengthening quality and safety supervision of old community renovation, coordinating the renovation of old residential communities and dangerous housing, and continuously improving the living environment, facility conditions, service functions, and cultural value of old residential communities.

Tang Xingtong, a digital business innovation consultant and AI marketing and sales expert, analyzed that the core competition in the home decoration industry over the next decade will focus on existing housing decoration and old-home renovation. The development of old-home renovation is jointly driven by demographic changes and policy guidance, while the real scale increment in the home decoration market comes from the continuous renewal demand of more than 200 million existing homes nationwide.

The latest data from the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development shows that from 2019 to 2024, China cumulatively started renovation of 280,000 old residential communities, benefiting 48 million households and more than 120 million people. A total of 360,000 kilometers of aging pipelines of various types were renovated and upgraded, 3.87 million parking spaces were added, and 78,000 community service facilities such as elderly care and childcare facilities were built.

At the live broadcast of the industrialized interior development salon series on urban renewal and good house construction at the Deep Blue Think Tank Annual Forum, Li Hua, an expert of the Beijing Affordable Housing Expert Committee, pointed out that renovation of old residential communities is an important part of urban renewal, and its core concept is people-oriented. Consumer demand can be divided into two levels: solving problems and improving quality. Enterprises need to focus on eliminating consumers' concerns.

Breakthroughs still require effort

The dual pull of policy and demand has made the old-home renovation market a trillion-yuan blue ocean, and it has become an irreversible development trend for the home furnishing industry. As growth in the new-home market slows and the dominant position of the existing housing market is further consolidated, the old-home renovation market, as a core segment of the existing housing market, will become the core engine of growth for the home furnishing industry.

It is worth noting that while the old-home renovation market continues to expand, it also faces many problems. The 2026 China Old-Home Renovation Market White Paper shows that the market faces three major challenges: traffic fog, thin profit ice, and capability gaps. During visits, Beijing Business Today learned that most renovation projects involve existing homes with complex layouts and difficult construction, and often involve demolition, waste removal, and other links, keeping labor, material, and transportation costs high. In addition, partial renovation projects have relatively low profits and are difficult to scale profitably. Meanwhile, some elderly consumers give up renovation because they fear hassle or high cost, which also makes customer acquisition difficult and expensive for enterprises.

Beijing Business Today learned that industry organizations such as the Guangdong Customized Home Furnishing Association have taken the lead in formulating and releasing normative documents including the Partial Old-Home Renovation Interior Decoration Construction Contract and the Partial Old-Home Renovation Interior Decoration Construction Guide Price, aiming to provide service standards and commercial contract templates that the industry can reference.

At present, it has become an inevitable trend for home furnishing enterprises to enter the old-home renovation track. In the future, the market will develop toward diversification, refinement, and digitalization, and segmented tracks such as partial renovation, age-friendly renovation, and intelligent renovation will enter a period of rapid development. For the old-home renovation market to move from its current small, scattered, and disorderly state toward scaled and high-quality development, coordinated promotion by enterprises, the industry, and policies is still needed.

Wang Rui said that enterprises must make efforts in three areas to achieve long-term development. First, they should shift from traffic thinking to user thinking and achieve precise customer acquisition through deep community cultivation and trust building. Second, they should shift from product selling to scenario-based solution services, using service value reconstruction to raise average order value and profit space. Finally, they should promote coordinated evolution of internal and external ecosystems and break through capability bottlenecks through supply chain integration and organizational capability optimization.

Source: Beijing Business Today