A property analyst advised caution yesterday amid growing media speculation over potential investments in the local real estate market by a group of visiting Chinese tycoons.
Despite the media’s attempts to paint a rosy picture of prospective Chinese investments, Kristy Huang (黃郁琪), director of CB Richard Ellis Taiwan’s (CBRE) institutional investment properties division, said that Chinese capital has yet to be injected into Taiwan.
“[Chinese investors] may have problem securing enough loans from local banks to fund their investment projects here unless they have enough capital of their own,” Huang told an American Chamber of Commerce in Taipei (AmCham) gathering.
The main source of capital inflow that could give the local property market a boost will still come from European and US investors, who have invested early on in Taiwan, or from Hong Kong and Malaysia, she said.
“It all depends on whether [Chinese investors] can offer valuable collateral to secure enough bank loans given the tight credit environment,” Huang said. “Chinese capital won’t be the mainstream source of potential capital injection for the time being.”
For example, the chances of Chinese investors winning in the upcoming auction of Agora Garden (亞太會館) hotel in Taipei’s Xinyi District (信義), with a floor price set at NT$14.9 billion (US$492 million), is slim, she said.
The members of the visiting Chinese property tycoon delegation, who visited Pingtung County’s Dapeng Bay National Scenic Area yesterday, had expressed their interest in acquiring the hotel or taking part in the operation of the Chiang Kai-shek mausoleum area (兩蔣文化園區) in Taoyuan and the Shuinan Trade Zone (水湳經貿園區) in Taichung, local media reported.
While CBRE advised caution, a local property developer was optimistic that Chinese investments would lift the local market.
“Their capital injection will boost local property prices and indirectly benefit local developers,” Mu Chun-sung (穆椿松), chairman of the Taiwan Construction Development Federation (台灣省建築開發公會), said by telephone yesterday.
Mu was also confident that Chinese investors would be able to secure the necessary bank loans.
“If necessary, they can go through multinational banks, not local banks, such as Citigroup [through a third country] to take out loans,” he said. “It won’t be a problem for [Chinese investors] to funnel funds [into Taiwan].”
Mu also dismissed concerns that Chinese investment would raise overall property prices, putting them out of reach of local home buyers.
He said that Chinese capital was likely to flow into and raise the prices of luxury homes or big property development projects, which will have a limited impact on the average prices of properties designed for the low to mid-income households.
Semiconductor business between Taiwan and the US is a “win-win” model for both sides given the high level of complementarity, the government said yesterday responding to tariff threats from US President Donald Trump. Home to the world’s largest contract chipmaker, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), Taiwan is a key link in the global technology supply chain for companies such as Apple Inc and Nvidia Corp. Trump said on Monday he plans to impose tariffs on imported chips, pharmaceuticals and steel in an effort to get the producers to make them in the US. “Taiwan and the US semiconductor and other technology industries
SMALL AND EFFICIENT: The Chinese AI app’s initial success has spurred worries in the US that its tech giants’ massive AI spending needs re-evaluation, a market strategist said Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) start-up DeepSeek’s (深度求索) eponymous AI assistant rocketed to the top of Apple Inc’s iPhone download charts, stirring doubts in Silicon Valley about the strength of the US’ technological dominance. The app’s underlying AI model is widely seen as competitive with OpenAI and Meta Platforms Inc’s latest. Its claim that it cost much less to train and develop triggered share moves across Asia’s supply chain. Chinese tech firms linked to DeepSeek, such as Iflytek Co (科大訊飛), surged yesterday, while chipmaking tool makers like Advantest Corp slumped on the potential threat to demand for Nvidia Corp’s AI accelerators. US stock
The US Federal Reserve is expected to announce a pause in rate cuts on Wednesday, as policymakers look to continue tackling inflation under close and vocal scrutiny from US President Donald Trump. The Fed cut its key lending rate by a full percentage point in the final four months of last year and indicated it would move more cautiously going forward amid an uptick in inflation away from its long-term target of 2 percent. “I think they will do nothing, and I think they should do nothing,” Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis former president Jim Bullard said. “I think the
Cryptocurrencies gave a lukewarm reception to US President Donald Trump’s first policy moves on digital assets, notching small gains after he commissioned a report on regulation and a crypto reserve. Bitcoin has been broadly steady since Trump took office on Monday and was trading at about US$105,000 yesterday as some of the euphoria around a hoped-for revolution in cryptocurrency regulation ebbed. Smaller cryptocurrency ether has likewise had a fairly steady week, although was up 5 percent in the Asia day to US$3,420. Bitcoin had been one of the most spectacular “Trump trades” in financial markets, gaining 50 percent to break above US$100,000 and
RSS