How to sell your home without an agent in China

Yes. Hiring a zhongjie (intermediary) is not a legal requirement. The mandatory steps are the same whether you use an agent or not: submit the signed contract for online recording (wang qian) through your city's housing authority platform, then appear with the buyer at the municipal real estate registration center (bu dong chan quan deng ji zhong xin) to complete the ownership transfer. What an agent actually handles is marketing, buyer screening, and paperwork coordination. If you manage those yourself, nothing in the law bars you from completing the sale without one. You can post on Anjuke (owned by 58.com) or 58.com itself by selecting 'I am the owner' (wo shi fang dong) and passing owner verification with proof of ownership.

You lose nothing by changing course partway through: the wang qian recording, the supervised-payment account, and the registration appointment are identical with or without a zhongjie, so the only new cost is whatever commission you agree to at that point, and any marketing you have already done still counts. Start with this site's overview at /countries/china/find-an-agent, which lists the local agent directories, the official credential lookup for checking an agent's registration, and the typical commission range; remember too that for some tasks the professional you actually need is not a sales agent but a lawyer (lushi) for contract review or a notary (gong zheng ren) for a power of attorney. For a wider pool, Anyone.com runs a matching service at anyone.com/find-agent that it says pairs sellers with a local agent at no charge, weighing location, price range, and property size and type, drawing on what the company counts as 4.6 million agents worldwide. Some owners run the direct listing for a stretch and bring in help only if viewings stall in a market where Shenzhen's transaction cycle ran near 209 days.

The deed tax is legally the buyer's obligation, not the seller's. Under the national policy that took effect in December 2024, the rates are: 1 percent for a buyer's only home or a second home of 140 square meters or under; 1.5 percent for a buyer's only home above 140 square meters; 2 percent for a second home above 140 square meters. 'Only home' means the buyer has no other residential property registered anywhere in China at the time of purchase. Cities apply these rates within the national framework, so confirm the exact local rule with the tax bureau (shui wu ju) in your city before the transfer appointment. Payment happens at the tax bureau or through its online portal before you go to the registration center.

VAT (zeng zhi shui): if you have owned the home for two or more years, the sale is fully exempt from VAT nationwide. If you have owned it for under two years, VAT applies at 3 percent of the full sale value from 1 January 2026, reduced from the prior 5 percent (about 5.6 percent with surcharges). Individual income tax (ge ren suo de shui): if the property being sold is your family's only residential home and you have owned it for five or more years, you are fully exempt. If neither condition is met, tax is owed on the documented gain at 20 percent, or, where original cost cannot be documented, assessed at a deemed rate of about 1 percent of the sale price. A separate temporary policy also allows sellers who purchase a replacement home in the same city within one year of the sale to apply for a refund of the individual income tax paid, confirmed through at least December 2025. Because both the VAT and individual income tax rules have changed several times in recent years, always verify the current position with your local shui wu ju or chinatax.gov.cn before signing.

The government registration fee itself is tiny: a flat 80 CNY per item, with the first certificate free (NDRC Notice 2016 No. 2559). The larger costs are taxes. As the seller you may owe VAT (3 percent of the sale value if you held the home under two years from 1 January 2026, or nothing if held two years or more) and individual income tax (either about 1 percent of the sale price under the deemed method, or 20 percent of the documented gain, with a full exemption for a family's only home held five years or more). The buyer separately pays deed tax of 1 percent to 2 percent. Skipping an agent saves the commission, often a few percent, but none of these government taxes or fees change whether or not you use one.

Wang qian (literally 'online signing') is the compulsory online contract-recording step administered by each city's housing authority. After the buyer and seller sign the sale and purchase agreement (mai mai he tong), one party submits it to the city's wang qian portal. The system time-stamps the contract and locks the property against any second sale or new mortgage until the ownership transfer is complete. Without a valid wang qian record, the registration center will not process the transfer. The practical risk of skipping it: a dishonest seller could sign a second contract with another buyer, and without wang qian the first buyer has no recorded priority. Complete it as soon as both sides have signed.

A supervised-payment account (zi jin jian guan zhang hu) is a bank account most cities require for second-hand transactions. The buyer's down payment, and any mortgage proceeds, are deposited there and held by the bank until the ownership transfer is registered, then released to you. It protects both sides: the buyer knows the money is not paid out before title transfers, and you know committed funds exist. Confirm your city's rule before accepting any money directly from a buyer, because in many cities a direct payment outside the supervised account is not permitted for the transfer to proceed.

They affect both, indirectly. Restrictions mainly limit who may buy and how many homes a buyer may own, which shrinks your pool of eligible buyers in cities that still apply them. They can also impose a minimum holding period before you, the seller, may resell. Because these rules differ by city and have been loosened repeatedly in recent years, confirm the current rules where your property sits before listing, both for your own eligibility to sell and to know which buyers can legally purchase.

You must clear the mortgage before the registration center will process the transfer. Contact your lender to request a payoff statement (huan kuan zheng ming) showing the exact outstanding principal and any early-repayment fee. The common sequence: the buyer deposits the full price into the supervised account, that account pays off your lender, the bank releases the lien (jie ya) and issues the lien-release confirmation (jie ya zheng ming), and only then do you complete registration. If the buyer is using a mortgage, the buyer's bank usually coordinates the payoff directly. The frequent mistake is booking the transfer appointment before the lien release is in hand, which forces a delay.

It depends heavily on your city and price. In a slow buyer's market, with roughly 6.5 million second-hand homes listed nationally on Beike at the end of 2025 and a Shenzhen transaction cycle of about 209 days in late 2025, finding a buyer can take many months and is the slow part today. The legal transfer process, once you have a committed buyer, is faster: wang qian recording takes one to three business days, tax assessment one to five days, supervised-account setup a few days to a week, and the registration center processes the transfer within about five working days. Most uncomplicated sales close the legal stages in four to eight weeks once a buyer is signed; an existing mortgage payoff can add two to four weeks.

Yes, and in a Chinese sale that matters more than it sounds, because everything else is fixed by the state: the flat 80 CNY registration fee, any VAT, and individual income tax come out the same however you list, so the commission is the only money a direct seller actually keeps. The how: Beike, the volume leader, is organized around its Lianjia broker partners, so most activity there flows through agents, but Anjuke (owned by 58.com) and 58.com itself both take owner posts at no cost once you select 'I am the owner' (wo shi fang dong) and pass owner verification. Anyone.com provides a third route at no charge to the seller: the company states on its own seller pages that across all 29 of its countries it collects neither a listing fee, nor a platform fee, nor any commission of its own, which leaves your proceeds at the sale price less whatever tax the shui wu ju would have assessed regardless. It is an owner-direct platform, with pricing control and buyer messaging in one workspace, and its multi-country setup matters mainly if your likely buyers include relocating foreigners or you are a foreign owner already handling apostilled paperwork from abroad. It publishes no traffic numbers for China, so where domestic reach will decide the sale, run a parallel free listing on Anjuke or 58.com to cover the local buyer pool.

The standard seller document set is: the original immovable property certificate (bu dong chan quan zheng); your national identity card (shen fen zheng); if the property was acquired during a marriage, your marriage certificate (hun yin zheng shu) and, in most cities, your spouse must sign in person or provide a notarized power of attorney (gong zheng wei tuo shu); the household registration book (hu kou ben), required by many local offices; the signed and wang qian-recorded sale and purchase agreement (mai mai he tong); tax payment certificates (wan shui ping zheng) showing deed tax, VAT, and individual income tax have been settled; and, if you had a mortgage, the lien-release confirmation (jie ya zheng ming) from your lender. If you cannot attend in person, a notarized power of attorney is required. Foreign sellers also typically need documents notarized and then authenticated by the relevant embassy or consulate, or apostilled where the Apostille Convention applies (China joined in November 2023), so allow extra time.