A majority of Taiwanese consider home prices unreasonably high after the mortgage-to-household-income ratio hit a record in Taipei City in the third quarter as prices surged to their highest level in eight years, a government survey released yesterday found.
Prices of newly purchased homes averaged NT$12.35 million (US$405,117) per unit, about 11 times the annual household income in Taipei, the Construction and Planning Agency’s survey found.
Prices have risen to NT$420,000 per ping (3.3m2) the previous high was set in the second quarter of 2002, the survey showed.
Mortgage payments accounted for 43.8 percent of household income in the capital and 31.2 percent for the rest of the country, the survey showed.
“The burdens led 60 percent of respondents in Taipei City and New Taipei City to describe home prices as unreasonable,” said Chang Chin-oh (張金鶚), a land economics professor at National Chengchi University, who helped organize the survey.
Housing prices averaged NT$7.5 million, or 8.9 times household income in New Taipei City (formerly Taipei County), with mortgage payments taking up 34.6 percent, the second-highest after Taipei home owners, the survey said.
The increasing burdens led 70 percent of respondents in New Taipei City to consider home prices unreasonable, the survey said.
Nearly 40 percent of new homebuyers dismissed links between the rising housing prices and Taiwan’s signing of an Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) with China in June, the survey said. The rest considered the pact a mixed blessing.
“The findings indicated reported benefits from ECFA are exaggerated,” Chang said, urging developers and real estate agencies to show restraint in pricing properties.
A majority of the respondents, 53.8 percent, said their home purchases were for their own use, while 18.5 percent cited investment, the survey said.
Chang said the survey showed that the central bank’s tightening measures aimed at cooling down the housing sector have been futile. He suggested the central bank and other regulators take stronger action if they are serious about reining in soaring prices.
The central bank will hold its quarterly board meeting next Thursday to review interest rates and other monetary policy.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) would not produce its most advanced technologies in the US next year, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) said yesterday. Kuo made the comment during an appearance at the legislature, hours after the chipmaker announced that it would invest an additional US$100 billion to expand its manufacturing operations in the US. Asked by Taiwan People’s Party Legislator-at-large Chang Chi-kai (張啟楷) if TSMC would allow its most advanced technologies, the yet-to-be-released 2-nanometer and 1.6-nanometer processes, to go to the US in the near term, Kuo denied it. TSMC recently opened its first US factory, which produces 4-nanometer
PROTECTION: The investigation, which takes aim at exporters such as Canada, Germany and Brazil, came days after Trump unveiled tariff hikes on steel and aluminum products US President Donald Trump on Saturday ordered a probe into potential tariffs on lumber imports — a move threatening to stoke trade tensions — while also pushing for a domestic supply boost. Trump signed an executive order instructing US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick to begin an investigation “to determine the effects on the national security of imports of timber, lumber and their derivative products.” The study might result in new tariffs being imposed, which would pile on top of existing levies. The investigation takes aim at exporters like Canada, Germany and Brazil, with White House officials earlier accusing these economies of
Teleperformance SE, the largest call-center operator in the world, is rolling out an artificial intelligence (AI) system that softens English-speaking Indian workers’ accents in real time in a move the company claims would make them more understandable. The technology, called accent translation, coupled with background noise cancelation, is being deployed in call centers in India, where workers provide customer support to some of Teleperformance’s international clients. The company provides outsourced customer support and content moderation to global companies including Apple Inc, ByteDance Ltd’s (字節跳動) TikTok and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd. “When you have an Indian agent on the line, sometimes it’s hard
PROBE CONTINUES: Those accused falsely represented that the chips would not be transferred to a person other than the authorized end users, court papers said Singapore charged three men with fraud in a case local media have linked to the movement of Nvidia’s advanced chips from the city-state to Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) firm DeepSeek (深度求索). The US is investigating if DeepSeek, the Chinese company whose AI model’s performance rocked the tech world in January, has been using US chips that are not allowed to be shipped to China, Reuters reported earlier. The Singapore case is part of a broader police investigation of 22 individuals and companies suspected of false representation, amid concerns that organized AI chip smuggling to China has been tracked out of nations such
RSS