Taiwanese expect housing prices to decline in the coming six months and will stay on the sidelines until they see a clear market correction, a quarterly survey by Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房屋) indicated yesterday.
The survey suggests a sluggish market this quarter and next as sellers remain reluctant to soften prices, while buyers delay purchasing decisions.
The sentiment changed little after President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) victory in the Jan. 14 presidential election and ensuing Lunar New Year holidays, the survey found.
A total of 53 percent of the respondents expect a price correction, compared with 55 percent before the election, according to the survey.
The survey was conducted first from Jan. 1 to Jan. 14 and again from Jan. 16 to Jan. 30.
The survey showed the election had a very limited impact on the housing market, Evertrust head researcher Jeffry Huang (黃增幅) said one week after Sinyi Realty Inc (信義房屋) unveiled similar findings.
A price drop from 10 to 15 percent would motivate 43 percent of respondents in Taipei to enter the market and 52 percent in New Taipei City (新北市) to follow suit, the survey said.
Buying interest climbed to 55 percent in Taoyuan, Hsinchu and Miaoli counties and 61 percent in central and southern Taiwan, the survey indicated.
The figures would consolidate the standoff between buyers and sellers, as housing prices have held steady in the greater Taipei area since the imposition of a special sales levy in June last year, Huang said.
“A price drop is even more unlikely once the global financial market stabilizes,” Huang said, adding that low interest rates and excess liquidity have also helped sustain housing prices.
Greg Yeh (葉國華), an adviser with Evertrust’s luxury home division, said cooling transactions for upscale housing units have more to do with scarce supply than weakening demand.
“Many wealthy Taiwanese wish to own luxury homes in the prime Xinyi (信義) and Da-an districts (大安), but very few can be found on the market,” Yeh said.
The luxury home segment may see an increase in supply from the third quarter onward as some investors would be spared from the luxury tax after meeting the two-year clause, Yeh said.
The luxury tax, which is intended to curb property speculation, subjects houses resold within two years of purchase to a levy of up to 15 percent of trading prices.
Nvidia Corp’s demand for advanced packaging from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) remains strong though the kind of technology it needs is changing, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said yesterday, after he was asked whether the company was cutting orders. Nvidia’s most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip, Blackwell, consists of multiple chips glued together using a complex chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) advanced packaging technology offered by TSMC, Nvidia’s main contract chipmaker. “As we move into Blackwell, we will use largely CoWoS-L. Of course, we’re still manufacturing Hopper, and Hopper will use CowoS-S. We will also transition the CoWoS-S capacity to CoWos-L,” Huang said
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) is expected to miss the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump on Monday, bucking a trend among high-profile US technology leaders. Huang is visiting East Asia this week, as he typically does around the time of the Lunar New Year, a person familiar with the situation said. He has never previously attended a US presidential inauguration, said the person, who asked not to be identified, because the plans have not been announced. That makes Nvidia an exception among the most valuable technology companies, most of which are sending cofounders or CEOs to the event. That includes
INDUSTRY LEADER: TSMC aims to continue outperforming the industry’s growth and makes 2025 another strong growth year, chairman and CEO C.C. Wei says Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc, yesterday said it aims to grow revenue by about 25 percent this year, driven by robust demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips. That means TSMC would continue to outpace the foundry industry’s 10 percent annual growth this year based on the chipmaker’s estimate. The chipmaker expects revenue from AI-related chips to double this year, extending a three-fold increase last year. The growth would quicken over the next five years at a compound annual growth rate of 45 percent, fueled by strong demand for the high-performance computing
TARIFF TRADE-OFF: Machinery exports to China dropped after Beijing ended its tariff reductions in June, while potential new tariffs fueled ‘front-loaded’ orders to the US The nation’s machinery exports to the US amounted to US$7.19 billion last year, surpassing the US$6.86 billion to China to become the largest export destination for the local machinery industry, the Taiwan Association of Machinery Industry (TAMI, 台灣機械公會) said in a report on Jan. 10. It came as some manufacturers brought forward or “front-loaded” US-bound shipments as required by customers ahead of potential tariffs imposed by the new US administration, the association said. During his campaign, US president-elect Donald Trump threatened tariffs of as high as 60 percent on Chinese goods and 10 percent to 20 percent on imports from other countries.
RSS