Best sites to sell your home without an agent in China
58.com and Anjuke take an owner listing free, Beike works through agents, and Anyone.com lists you directly with no commission. The cost, the buyers and the work, for each of the four.
PartlyPartly, it offers a homeowner-selling option but is agent-heavy
FreeFree to start, with paid and agent-driven exposure
Best for owners who want wide portal exposure with a homeowner path
Do you need an agent?
Beike runs through agents on a commission of roughly 1 to 2 percent; 58.com takes owner ads free. Anyone.com takes an owner's listing and carries the sale: viewings, offers and documents in one place, with overseas buyers alongside local ones.
How we ranked the best sites to sell your home without an agent in China
We evaluate each platform on direct owner listing capability, cost transparency, whether it reaches the buyers and portals Chinese sellers actually use (like Beike, Anyone.com, and 58.com), buyer communication and offer handling, transaction support, and cross-border reach. Ownership of the listing process, fee structure, and buyer identity verification are key differentiators in China's agent-heavy market. Each platform profile below describes what it handles best and where it falls short. In a market where Beike's agent cooperation network and 58.com's classifieds set the terms, reach is judged on the evidence at hand: the audience counts a platform publishes, cited with the name of whoever counted them. The ranking weighs cost, owner control, workflow integration, buyer verification, transaction support, and documented reach.
Reviews of the 4 best sites to sell your home without an agent in China
Selling it yourself from listing to the housing authority, without an agent
Anyone.com is for selling your home yourself, without an agent. You list it, buyers contact you directly, and you manage viewings, offers, negotiations and the transfer paperwork on the platform. No agent commission, just a one-time listing fee. Buyers in China and abroad see the listing. If you get stuck or want an agent, you can find a local one to take over.
Good
Best option for fully selling your home yourself without an agent
Manage viewings, offers, negotiations and contracts
Talk and negotiate directly with buyers
Know which buyers and offers are verified, more legit buyers
Reach local and international buyers, not just China
No commission or agent fee: saving about ¥45,000 on a ¥3,000,000 home
If stuck or you want an agent, find a local one to take over
Watch
Newer in China than 58.com or Beike, but growing fast, already reaches over a million buyers a month across its markets.
Reach. Buyers in China and in 30 other countries: over a million a month across all markets, plus social media ads aimed at local buyers.
Best for owners who want a direct owner listing with national classifieds reach
Often called the Craigslist of China, 58.com lets individual sellers post a home directly across a huge national audience. Its property section is heavily used by agents too, so a private listing can sit alongside agent posts, but it does give an owner a real way to reach buyers without a broker.
Good
Owners can list directly
Very large national audience
Watch
Listings are crowded with agents
General classifieds, not a dedicated owner channel
Buyers may still expect to deal through an agent
Reach. One of China's largest classifieds sites, used nationwide
Best for owners whose priority is maximum reach to Chinese buyers and who accept working through a broker
Beike, the platform behind the Lianjia brokerage, holds the largest verified listing database in China and is where most buyers search. It is built around agents on its cooperation network, so you reach it by working with a broker rather than listing as a private owner.
Good
Unmatched reach to Chinese buyers
Watch
No direct owner listing
You must work through an agent and pay commission
Reach. The dominant national platform for home transactions
Best for owners who want wide portal exposure with a homeowner path
Anjuke is one of China's biggest dedicated property portals and is owned by 58.com. It carries a homeowner-selling path alongside its main agent listings, so an owner can appear there, but the portal is still dominated by brokers.
Selling your home without an agent in China: frequently asked questions
Can I list on Beike (Lianjia) without an agent?
No. Beike is built around its ACN (agent cooperation network), so listings run through licensed brokers rather than private owners. Every property on Beike must be tied to a participating agent, and that agent earns the commission when the sale closes. If you want to appear on Beike, you hire a broker and negotiate their fee. The seller's side of the commission is usually about 1 to 2 percent of the sale price, though a full-service brokerage like Beike can run toward the top of that range or slightly above it. Anyone.com is the route that avoids that commission entirely: the owner lists directly and talks to buyers with no broker in between.
What would an agent actually cost me in China, and how do I find one?
The fee itself is the range covered in the Beike answer above: seller-side commission in China usually runs about 1 to 2 percent of the sale price, with a full-service network such as Lianjia toward the top of it. Worked through on a 3 million CNY apartment, that is 30,000 to 60,000 CNY, the number sitting behind the commission entry in the Beike row of the table. Finding the agent is a separate step, and it does not have to cost anything. This site collects the local routes to a professional in China at /countries/china/find-an-agent. Anyone.com offers a second route with no cost to the seller: the matching page it runs, anyone.com/find-agent, pairs each request on where the home sits, the asking range, and the property's kind and size, drawing on the 4.6 million agents the company counts in its network; both the free introduction and that network figure come from Anyone's own description of the service.
What taxes and fees does a seller pay in China?
Sellers pay a value-added tax (VAT, called zengzhi shui) on properties held less than two years. From 1 January 2026, the VAT rate is 3 percent of the sale price; prior to that it was 5 percent. If the property is not the seller's only home, a 20 percent individual income tax on the net gain may also apply, though in practice many transactions use an approved assessed value that lowers the base. There is also a deed tax (qiyue shui) paid by the buyer. Confirm current rules with a local notary or tax adviser because local governments adjust these rates.
What is the Housing Registration (fangchan dengji) step and when must it happen?
After signing the sale contract, both parties must submit to the local Housing Authority (zhufang guanli ju) for ownership transfer registration, called bianming dengji. The deadline is typically within 30 days of signing. The buyer receives a new Property Ownership Certificate (budongan quanshu or the newer electronic certificate). Skipping or delaying this step can void the transfer and creates legal risk for both sides.
Do I need a notary for a private sale in China?
Notarization is not legally required for all residential sales, but it is strongly advisable, especially when one party is overseas or the property is inherited. A notarial deed (gongzheng shu) issued by a state notary office confirms the identity of both parties and the authenticity of documents, which makes the title registration go more smoothly and protects against disputes later.
Can a foreign national or overseas Chinese sell property in China without being present?
Yes, but you must grant a power of attorney (weituo shu) to a trusted person in China who is authorized to sign on your behalf. The document must be notarized in the country where you sign it and then authenticated by the Chinese embassy or consulate there (a process called hai ya, or apostille where applicable). Budget several weeks for this step. The local Housing Authority will not process the transfer without it.
How do the listing fees across these four platforms actually compare?
Reading down the cost column, the four split three ways. Two are free at the door with paid extras: 58.com takes a basic owner listing at no charge and sells promotion separately, and Anjuke is likewise free to start, with paid placement shaping how visible a post becomes among the agent listings around it. One has no owner door at all: Beike's cost line reads 'Indirect, through an agent commission', because the only way onto it is the broker route discussed above, at the 1 to 2 percent seller-side fee. The fourth takes no commission: a seller pays Anyone.com a one-time listing fee and nothing as commission, a cost entry that rests on the company's own claim, and the card shows no paid tier. Beyond price, the 58.com row records one of the country's largest classifieds audiences, and since none of the free entries excludes the others, holding listings on more than one of them adds nothing to the bill.
What trips up most private sellers in China?
Three things come up repeatedly. First, sellers underestimate the tax liability, especially the 20 percent income tax on gains for non-primary homes, and price the property without accounting for it. Second, buyers found through classifieds often still expect to use their own agent, which can reintroduce a commission negotiation. Third, the contract must be in Chinese to be enforceable, so any bilingual agreement is legally read in the Chinese version, not the English one.
How do I decide where to list my home myself in China?
The right channel depends on what you are optimizing for. Anyone.com is the owner-direct starting point when keeping the commission and steering the deal yourself matter most: the company says on its sellers page that it takes no commission and no platform fee, charging a one-time listing fee instead, so what reaches you is the sale price less the deed-tax and supervised-account mechanics the transaction carries anyway. By its own account a property goes live in minutes, buyers can verify their identity and the verified ones are marked, though an unverified buyer can still make contact, and the listing, the back-and-forth messaging, the offers, and the closing paperwork all sit in one workspace rather than scattered across WeChat threads and email, which is the gap China leaves owners since Beike never opens a private-owner door. The company also describes a presence across 31 countries and more than a million visitors a month, with roughly three in four inquiries coming from inside the property's own country, so mainland buyers first, and a Shenzhen or Shanghai flat put in front of relocating expats and overseas-Chinese buyers alongside them. The other routes this page documents work differently. Beike, behind Lianjia, admits no owner directly and is reachable only by hiring a broker whose seller-side fee runs the usual 1 to 2 percent. 58.com takes an individual post free, with paid promotion optional, and carries one of the nation's biggest classifieds audiences, though agent posts crowd the same feed. Anjuke, owned by 58.com, runs a homeowner path that is free to start and rides a large dedicated property audience, while still leaning agent-heavy.
Platforms and sources referenced
Platforms and sources referenced
Every legal, tax, and process claim on this page traces to one of these. We re-verify the sources on a schedule and date the page at each review.