Is soufun.com legit or a scam?
SouFun is a massive, 25-year-old Chinese real estate portal that is a legitimate business despite common industry complaints regarding listing accuracy.
Analysis Summary
No threats detected
All checks passed. This site appears legitimate — but always stay alert for phishing even on trusted domains.
Website Preview
Automated page render — captured in a safe sandbox. What an ordinary visitor would see when loading the site.
MT Intelligence
The domain was registered in 1999 and has been a cornerstone of the Chinese property market for over two decades. Our analysis confirms it is operated by Beijing SouFun Science & Technology Development Co., Ltd., a company formerly listed on the New York Stock Exchange. The site maintains a high global traffic rank and uses valid, high-assurance SSL encryption. While there are documented reports of 'fake listings' posted by independent agents on the platform, this is a common issue with large-scale classified sites rather than a sign of a fraudulent operator. The infrastructure is robust, and the site is widely recognized by major financial and news institutions.
Web Research Findings
Our live research agent queries scam-report databases, consumer-review sites, news coverage, and general web search for soufun.com, then cross-checks business-registration records and look-alike domain patterns. Everything below is pulled from what it actually found.
- soufun.com is the historic domain (registered April 15, 1999) for SouFun / 搜房网, China's major real estate portal providing listings, news, live viewings, and forums; primary active site is now fang.com.
- Operated by Beijing SouFun Science & Technology Development Co., Ltd. (est. 2006), a legitimate Chinese company with ICP licenses, formerly publicly listed (NYSE: SFUN).
- Rebranded to Fang.com / 房天下 in 2014; described in official sources as a leading platform with hundreds of millions of app users across hundreds of cities.
- User and media complaints exist about fake or inaccurate property listings (common in Chinese real estate portals), agent scams on the platform, and past regulatory mentions for APP violations and data inaccuracies.
- Past SEC-related litigation (2015-2016) alleged fabricated rental contracts by some brokers (dismissed in court on materiality grounds); company has faced financial losses and founder resignation in recent years.
- No widespread scam reports targeting soufun.com itself as fraudulent; site includes official complaint channels (jubao@fang.com) and is referenced positively in investor and Wikipedia materials.
- Domain age of ~27 years and business registration confirm it is not a new or fly-by-night operation.
- Zhihuopen
"What listings posted on SouFun or Ganji by real estate agents look good, but in fact, 99% of them are fake listings."
- Baidu Baike / reportsopen
"The platform has been reported by regulatory authorities for APP violations and issues with inaccurate property listing information."
- SEC filings / court caseopen
"Plaintiffs alleged that defendants ... touting rapid growth in SouFun’s new rental brokerage business while failing to disclose that many of its purported rental contracts had been fabricated by SouFun’s brokers."
- Apax Partnersopen
"SouFun is the leading online real estate website in China, allowing the highly cost effective marketing of new developments and existing homes to buyers in 106 of China's largest cities."
- Wikipedia / Baidu Baikeopen
"搜房或房天下（NYSE：SFUN）成立于1999年，是中国房地产家居网络媒体和信息服务企业。业务覆盖全球104个城市及地区。"
- Company filingsopen
"SouFun is the leading real estate Internet portal in China in terms of the number of page views, visitors to its website and revenues."
Beijing SouFun Science & Technology Development Co., Ltd. (北京搜房科技发展有限公司), established March 14, 2006, legal rep Mo Tianquan (resigned 2026 per some reports), registered capital 11 million RMB. Operates Fang.com (rebranded from SouFun in 2014). Formerly NYSE: SFUN. Active with 139 employees (2024 dat
Antivirus Engines
Security Scans
Checked against the major public blocklists used by browsers and security tools — no hits.
Contact Verification
We fetched the page and looked for real-world contact details. Legitimate businesses almost always publish an email on their own domain, a phone number, and a postal address. Scam shops usually don't.
- No email uses the site's own domain — legitimate shops usually do.
- No postal address visible on the page.
- Phone number listed (1038864).
Domain & Encryption
Redirect Chain
- 1301http://soufun.com/
- 2200http://www.soufun.com/cross-domain
Server Reputation
Still, stay alert
No major threat indicators — but a clean scan does not guarantee every page is safe, and phishing emails routinely spoof real domains.
- Double-check the exact URL in your address bar
Confirm you are actually on soufun.com and not a lookalike like s-oufun.com.com or an IDN homoglyph.
- Use a password manager
Password managers only auto-fill on the exact domain they were saved for — they refuse to fill lookalike domains, which is the single best phishing defence.
- OpenDiscuss this site on the forum
If you have first-hand experience with this site — good or bad — share it with the MalwareTips community.
Reputation Sources
How this domain rates across independent threat-intelligence and blocklist providers.
Referenced Domains
Outbound domains this page links to or loads resources from. Each links to its own security scan.
Safety FAQ
Common questions about this site, answered directly from the scan data above — so the answers always reflect the latest verdict on this page.
- Our automated security review found no threat indicators on soufun.com. The site appears legitimate based on the signals we checked, but always stay alert for phishing emails that spoof real domains.
- soufun.com passed our automated security checks with a trust score of 86/100. No antivirus engines or major blacklists flagged the site at the time of the last scan.
- Yes. soufun.com presents a valid TLSv1.2 certificate issued by GlobalSign nv-sa · GlobalSign RSA OV SSL CA 2018, expiring in 58 days. Note that SSL only encrypts the connection — it does not guarantee that the site itself is trustworthy.
- soufun.com is 27.2 years old, registered on 4/15/1999 through Alibaba Cloud Computing (Beijing) Co., Ltd.. Scam domains are often freshly registered — a site under 6 months old warrants extra caution.
- No. All 92 antivirus engines in our malware network report soufun.com as clean.
- No. soufun.com is not currently listed on the major browser blocklist feeds that modern browsers use.
- soufun.com resolves to an IP operated by 21ViaNet(China),Inc. in CN (usage type: Commercial). Hosting location alone doesn't make a site good or bad, but unusual geography for a brand's claimed country is one of many signals we weigh.
- Yes. soufun.com sits in the global top-100k on Cloudflare Radar, which means it has substantial real-world traffic. That does not automatically make it safe, but established brands almost always rank here and throwaway scam domains almost never do.
User reviews & comments(0)
Share your experience — "Lost $200 on a fake checkout" is more useful than "Scam". Your review helps others avoid traps.