The local property market showed signs of improving last month, but mainly due to an increase in business days that month and a low base in February, a survey published by the Chinese-language Housing Monthly (住展雜誌) said last week.
The volume of housing put on the market, visits by potential buyers, as well as other factors, improved last month, as there were more business days than in February, when firms closed their doors for six days over the Lunar New Year holiday, the survey showed.
The housing index rose 4.4 points from a month earlier to 32.4 and stood at “yellow-blue,” indicating sluggish market growth, after three consecutive months in the “blue” category, pointing to contraction, the magazine said.
The survey echoed statistics compiled by the six special municipalities — Taipei, New Taipei City, Taoyuan, Taichung, Tainan and Kaohsiung — which showed that residential and commercial property transactions grew sharply from February after the holiday.
The magazine said that all of the six subfactors in the housing index pointed to an increase.
The subindices for listings of presale homes, listings of new-built homes and levels of property advertising rose to 7.26, 4.16 and 4.18, respectively, from 6.17, 3.04 and 3.58 a month earlier.
Meanwhile, the subindices for home price negotiations, the number of visits by potential buyers and transactions also rose to 5.12, 6.53 and 5.16, respectively, compared with February’s 4.78, 5.76 and 4.69, the survey showed.
Ho Shih-chang (何世昌), a research manager at the magazine, said that as property developers intensified efforts to unveil pre-sale projects last month, the value of the newly publicized presale products reached NT$40 billion (US$1.37 billion), a recent high.
The number of property advertisements also grew 47 percent from a month earlier, in line with the increase in supply, Ho said.
The number of visits by prospective buyers grew about 20 percent from a month earlier, with buying interest focusing on properties in Taipei, New Taipei City, Taoyuan, and Hsinchu and Yilan counties, he said, adding that the number of deals also grew almost 10 percent from February.
However, buyers still favored cheaper homes and many of them remained reluctant to purchase, Ho said, adding that it is too early to say when the local property market might recover.
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