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.
Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday said that its research institute has launched its first advanced artificial intelligence (AI) large language model (LLM) using traditional Chinese, with technology assistance from Nvidia Corp. Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), said the LLM, FoxBrain, is expected to improve its data analysis capabilities for smart manufacturing, and electric vehicle and smart city development. An LLM is a type of AI trained on vast amounts of text data and uses deep learning techniques, particularly neural networks, to process and generate language. They are essential for building and improving AI-powered servers. Nvidia provided assistance
GREAT SUCCESS: Republican Senator Todd Young expressed surprise at Trump’s comments and said he expects the administration to keep the program running US lawmakers who helped secure billions of dollars in subsidies for domestic semiconductor manufacturing rejected US President Donald Trump’s call to revoke the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act, signaling that any repeal effort in the US Congress would fall short. US Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who negotiated the law, on Wednesday said that Trump’s demand would fail, while a top Republican proponent, US Senator Todd Young, expressed surprise at the president’s comments and said he expects the administration to keep the program running. The CHIPS Act is “essential for America leading the world in tech, leading the world in AI [artificial
DOMESTIC SUPPLY: The probe comes as Donald Trump has called for the repeal of the US$52.7 billion CHIPS and Science Act, which the US Congress passed in 2022 The Office of the US Trade Representative is to hold a hearing tomorrow into older Chinese-made “legacy” semiconductors that could heap more US tariffs on chips from China that power everyday goods from cars to washing machines to telecoms equipment. The probe, which began during former US president Joe Biden’s tenure in December last year, aims to protect US and other semiconductor producers from China’s massive state-driven buildup of domestic chip supply. A 50 percent US tariff on Chinese semiconductors began on Jan. 1. Legacy chips use older manufacturing processes introduced more than a decade ago and are often far simpler than
Gasoline and diesel prices this week are to decrease NT$0.5 and NT$1 per liter respectively as international crude prices continued to fall last week, CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油) and Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化) said yesterday. Effective today, gasoline prices at CPC and Formosa stations are to decrease to NT$29.2, NT$30.7 and NT$32.7 per liter for 92, 95 and 98-octane unleaded gasoline respectively, while premium diesel is to cost NT$27.9 per liter at CPC stations and NT$27.7 at Formosa pumps, the companies said in separate statements. Global crude oil prices dropped last week after the eight OPEC+ members said they would
RSS