The Ministry of Finance (MOF) yesterday said it had found 1,502 suspected cases of dummy buyers and abuses of preferential house loans in contravention of the self-occupancy rule.
The announcement follows the ministry’s move to crack down on abuses of favorable lending terms that include interest subsidies, a five-year grace period and mortgages of up to 40 years to help people purchase their first home for self-occupancy.
“With help from state-run banks and government data, we spotted 170 dummy buyers and another 1,332 mortgagers who leased out their houses,” it said in a statement.
Photo: CNA
The ministry has drawn criticism for rekindling housing fever by introducing the favorable lending terms in August last year.
Critics say the program and stock market rally have canceled the effect of a series of credit controls and policy measures that had earlier slowed housing transactions and price hikes.
The ministry said the results came from its first wave of inspections of housing deals from Aug. 1 last year to March 31 this year.
Housing transactions carried out from April 1 would be the focus of the second-wave probe, the ministry said, adding that it is confident that loan abuses would drop from June 27 when mortgagers are required to sign an affidavit stating that the house they are buying is for self-occupancy.
Violators would have their preferential lending terms revoked and they must return the interest differential, the ministry said.
In addition, favorable lending terms are limited to once per person, meaning that those who sell a home purchased under the program would not qualify in the future.
Property investors and wealthy people have allegedly used dummy buyers, including their children, to take advantage of the program and advance asset allocation purposes.
Tightened mortgage reviews appear to be effective, with loan applications last month declining 10.74 percent to NT$56.77 billion (US$1.74 billion) and 12.44 percent to 7,244 units, the ministry said.
The program is aimed at helping households without their own homes and unqualified buyers should not abuse the government’s goodwill, it said.
H&B Realty Co (住商不動產), the nation’s largest broker by number of franchises, said that the incidence of abuse was quite low, accounting for only 2.3 percent of 65,000 approved applications.
The small number suggests that real demand underpinned the housing boom for the past 11 months and should continue to lend support to the market, H&B head researcher Jessica Hsu (徐佳馨) said.
The double-digit percentage drop last month showed that the market took the government’s warnings seriously, Great Home Realty Co (大家房屋) said.
A longer observation of the market is needed to determine if the boom would be sustainable for the remainder of the year, it said.
‘SWASTICAR’: Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s close association with Donald Trump has prompted opponents to brand him a ‘Nazi’ and resulted in a dramatic drop in sales Demonstrators descended on Tesla Inc dealerships across the US, and in Europe and Canada on Saturday to protest company chief Elon Musk, who has amassed extraordinary power as a top adviser to US President Donald Trump. Waving signs with messages such as “Musk is stealing our money” and “Reclaim our country,” the protests largely took place peacefully following fiery episodes of vandalism on Tesla vehicles, dealerships and other facilities in recent weeks that US officials have denounced as terrorism. Hundreds rallied on Saturday outside the Tesla dealership in Manhattan. Some blasted Musk, the world’s richest man, while others demanded the shuttering of his
TIGHT-LIPPED: UMC said it had no merger plans at the moment, after Nikkei Asia reported that the firm and GlobalFoundries were considering restarting merger talks United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電), the world’s No. 4 contract chipmaker, yesterday launched a new US$5 billion 12-inch chip factory in Singapore as part of its latest effort to diversify its manufacturing footprint amid growing geopolitical risks. The new factory, adjacent to UMC’s existing Singapore fab in the Pasir Res Wafer Fab Park, is scheduled to enter volume production next year, utilizing mature 22-nanometer and 28-nanometer process technologies, UMC said in a statement. The company plans to invest US$5 billion during the first phase of the new fab, which would have an installed capacity of 30,000 12-inch wafers per month, it said. The
MULTIFACETED: A task force has analyzed possible scenarios and created responses to assist domestic industries in dealing with US tariffs, the economics minister said The Executive Yuan is tomorrow to announce countermeasures to US President Donald Trump’s planned reciprocal tariffs, although the details of the plan would not be made public until Monday next week, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) said yesterday. The Cabinet established an economic and trade task force in November last year to deal with US trade and tariff related issues, Kuo told reporters outside the legislature in Taipei. The task force has been analyzing and evaluating all kinds of scenarios to identify suitable responses and determine how best to assist domestic industries in managing the effects of Trump’s tariffs, he
Taiwan’s official purchasing managers’ index (PMI) last month rose 0.2 percentage points to 54.2, in a second consecutive month of expansion, thanks to front-loading demand intended to avoid potential US tariff hikes, the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. While short-term demand appeared robust, uncertainties rose due to US President Donald Trump’s unpredictable trade policy, CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) told a news conference in Taipei. Taiwan’s economy this year would be characterized by high-level fluctuations and the volatility would be wilder than most expect, Lien said Demand for electronics, particularly semiconductors, continues to benefit from US technology giants’ effort
RSS