With liquidity still abundant, commercial real estate properities in Taipei may see selling prices peak (or climb higher) next year while the global ecocnomic slowdown constrains the leasing market, a Jones Lang LaSalle's director said yesterday.
The remark came after Jones Lang LaSalle — a financial and professional services firm specializing in real estate — released its latest survey for the Taipei Grade A office market.
The vacancy rates and rents for Grade A offices in Taipei generally remained flat in the third quarter from the second quarter, the report said.
The average vacancy for Grade A offices in Taipei dropped to 10.07 percent during the July-to-September period, a slight decrease of 0.1 percentage points from the April-to-June period, while rents remained at NT$2,387 (US$81.50) per ping (3.3m2) per month in the third quarter, similar to that of the previous quarter, the report’s data showed.
However, total take-up fell considerably, from the 12,445 ping recorded in the second quarter to 782 ping in the third quarter, as the depressed global economy pushed corporate tenants to adopt a wait-and-see stance.
INVESTMENT
On the investment front, the total transaction volume of commercial real estate in the third quarter amounted to NT$54.7 billion, up 82.5 percent and 7.16 percent from a quarter and a year earlier, according to the report.
“The slowing leasing sentiment in the Taipei Grade A office market showed the current trading momentum and prices for office buildings were mainly supported by abundant capital, instead of economic fundamentals,” Jones Lang LaSalle managing director Tony Chao (趙正義) told a media briefing.
The situation may cause momentum in trading prices for commercial properties to peak in the near future, Chao added.
Chao said momentum of trading volume may continue to support the commercial market steadily, with Taiwan’s financial and insurance institutions remaining the most active investors.
THIRD QUARTER
For the third quarter, financial and insurance institutions that have been investigating suitable assets accounted for around 55 percent of total transactions, followed by property developers that contributed another 31 percent, the report’s statistics showed.
In related news, data released by real estate service provider DTZ (戴德梁行) on Monday said the transaction volume for commercial property throughout Taiwan topped NT$46.5 billion in the third quarter of the year, up 72.5 percent from the second quarter, while real estate transactions volume also surged to NT$57.2 billion in the third quarter, the highest quarterly level in nearly two years, the Chinese-language Economic Daily News reported.
CHIP WAR: Tariffs on Taiwanese chips would prompt companies to move their factories, but not necessarily to the US, unleashing a ‘global cross-sector tariff war’ US President Donald Trump would “shoot himself in the foot” if he follows through on his recent pledge to impose higher tariffs on Taiwanese and other foreign semiconductors entering the US, analysts said. Trump’s plans to raise tariffs on chips manufactured in Taiwan to as high as 100 percent would backfire, macroeconomist Henry Wu (吳嘉隆) said. He would “shoot himself in the foot,” Wu said on Saturday, as such economic measures would lead Taiwanese chip suppliers to pass on additional costs to their US clients and consumers, and ultimately cause another wave of inflation. Trump has claimed that Taiwan took up to
A start-up in Mexico is trying to help get a handle on one coastal city’s plastic waste problem by converting it into gasoline, diesel and other fuels. With less than 10 percent of the world’s plastics being recycled, Petgas’ idea is that rather than letting discarded plastic become waste, it can become productive again as fuel. Petgas developed a machine in the port city of Boca del Rio that uses pyrolysis, a thermodynamic process that heats plastics in the absence of oxygen, breaking it down to produce gasoline, diesel, kerosene, paraffin and coke. Petgas chief technology officer Carlos Parraguirre Diaz said that in
Japan intends to closely monitor the impact on its currency of US President Donald Trump’s new tariffs and is worried about the international fallout from the trade imposts, Japanese Minister of Finance Katsunobu Kato said. “We need to carefully see how the exchange rate and other factors will be affected and what form US monetary policy will take in the future,” Kato said yesterday in an interview with Fuji Television. Japan is very concerned about how the tariffs might impact the global economy, he added. Kato spoke as nations and firms brace for potential repercussions after Trump unleashed the first salvo of
SUPPORT: The government said it would help firms deal with supply disruptions, after Trump signed orders imposing tariffs of 25 percent on imports from Canada and Mexico The government pledged to help companies with operations in Mexico, such as iPhone assembler Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), shift production lines and investment if needed to deal with higher US tariffs. The Ministry of Economic Affairs yesterday announced measures to help local firms cope with the US tariff increases on Canada, Mexico, China and other potential areas. The ministry said that it would establish an investment and trade service center in the US to help Taiwanese firms assess the investment environment in different US states, plan supply chain relocation strategies and
RSS