The central bank’s latest credit controls would reduce property transactions by 10 to 15 percent this year, which would particularly affect people looking to move, developers and analysts said yesterday.
The central bank on Thursday banned lenders from granting grace periods to buyers of second homes in Kaohsiung, New Taipei City, Taichung, Tainan, Taipei, Taoyuan, and Hsinchu city and county.
The measure, which went into effect yesterday, is intended to prevent overleveraging of individual buyers, as the six special municipalities, and Hsinchu city and county account for 82.6 percent of mortgage loans nationwide, the governor said.
Lai Cheng-yi (賴正鎰), who owns Taichung-based Shining Group (鄉林集團), said developers would be less active in launching housing projects with volume likely to shrink by 10 to 15 percent to NT$1.2 trillion (US$43.27 billion) this year.
However, the central bank described its adjustment as “minor.”
The central bank previously directed its credit controls at corporate buyers, but shifted focus to individuals, Lai said, adding that the move would hurt real demand.
Chinatrust Real Estate Co (中信房屋) said that the absence of a grace period would affect people with relocation needs the most.
Buyers of second homes only need to pay NT$10,916 during the first three years of grace periods based on a 1.31 percent interest rate, giving them sufficient time to sell their first houses and move into a new one, Chinatrust said.
Without grace periods, owners would pay NT$33,608 a month to cover interest and the principal of a NT$10 million loan, it said.
Jessica Hsu (徐佳馨), head researcher at H&B Realty Co (住商不動產), said she was not surprised at the tightening measure, as real-estate lending has showed no signs of subsiding following two earlier waves of credit controls.
First-home buyers would underpin the market as they remain unaffected by credit restrictions, Hsu said.
That means property funds would flow to less popular locations, where homes are relatively affordable, especially for young people, Hsu said.
The central bank also cut the loan-to-value ratios for land financing from 65 to 60 percent, and from 55 to 50 percent for land plots in industrial parks. Buyers of land plots in industrial parks must take action on their development plans within one year after purchase.
China’s Huawei Technologies Co (華為) plans to start mass-producing its most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip in the first quarter of next year, even as it struggles to make enough chips due to US restrictions, two people familiar with the matter said. The telecoms conglomerate has sent samples of the Ascend 910C — its newest chip, meant to rival those made by US chipmaker Nvidia Corp — to some technology firms and started taking orders, the sources told Reuters. The 910C is being made by top Chinese contract chipmaker Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯) on its N+2 process, but a lack
NVIDIA PLATFORM: Hon Hai’s Mexican facility is to begin production early next year and a Taiwan site is to enter production next month, Nvidia wrote on its blog Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), the world’s biggest electronics manufacturer, yesterday said it is expanding production capacity of artificial intelligence (AI) servers based on Nvidia Corp’s Blackwell chips in Taiwan, the US and Mexico to cope with rising demand. Hon Hai’s new AI-enabled factories are to use Nvidia’s Omnivores platform to create 3D digital twins to plan and simulate automated production lines at a factory in Hsinchu, the company said in a statement. Nvidia’s Omnivores platform is for developing industrial AI simulation applications and helps bring facilities online faster. Hon Hai’s Mexican facility is to begin production early next year and the
Who would not want a social media audience that grows without new content? During the three years she paused production of her short do-it-yourself (DIY) farmer’s lifestyle videos, Chinese vlogger Li Ziqi (李子柒), 34, has seen her YouTube subscribers increase to 20.2 million from about 14 million. While YouTube is banned in China, her fan base there — although not the size of YouTube’s MrBeast, who has 330 million subscribers — is close to 100 million across the country’s social media platforms Douyin (抖音), Sina Weibo (新浪微博) and Xiaohongshu (小紅書). When Li finally released new videos last week — ending what has
TECH BOOST: New TSMC wafer fabs in Arizona are to dramatically improve US advanced chip production, a report by market research firm TrendForce said With Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) pouring large funds into Arizona, the US is expected to see an improvement in its status to become the second-largest maker of advanced semiconductors in 2027, Taipei-based market researcher TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) said in a report last week. TrendForce estimates the US would account for a 21 percent share in the global advanced integrated circuit (IC) production market by 2027, sharply up from the current 9 percent, as TSMC is investing US$65 billion to build three wafer fabs in Arizona, the report said. TrendForce defined the advanced chipmaking processes as the 7-nanometer process or more
RSS