Housing transactions in the first six months of this year soared 27 percent from a year earlier to 177,000 units, two separate surveys showed, despite steep price increases in some major urban centers.
Sinyi Realty Inc (信義房屋), Taiwan’s only listed broker, yesterday said that there was an increase in transactions for new and existing houses as buyer interest spiked.
More increases are expected, Sinyi Realty said.
Photo: Hsu Yi-ping, Taipei Times
The upbeat sentiment came even though home prices rose 4.8 to 17 percent in the six special municipalities — Taipei, New Taipei City, Taoyuan, Taichung, Tainan and Kaohsiung — as well as Hsinchu city and county, Sinyi research manager Tseng Ching-der (曾進德) said.
Prices in the Hsinchu area increased the most nationwide with a 17.1 percent jump in the first half, followed by Taoyuan (15.6 percent), Taichung (14.9 percent) and Kaohsiung (13.1 percent), the company said.
Sinyi Realty linked the surge in buying interest to an economic recovery and TAIEX rallies.
Taiwan’s exports expanded more than 10 percent in the first half and would gain pace in the high sales season for technology products, Tseng said.
At the same time, local stocks have repeatedly set new highs amid a global craze for artificial intelligence applications, he said.
Sinyi Realty expects challenges to arise, as the central bank last month raised the lenders’ reserve requirement ratio by 12.5 basis points and lowered the loan-to-value limit from 70 percent to 60 percent for second-home mortgages in the six special municipalities and Hsinchu.
Furthermore, the government and state-run banks have tightened reviews for first-home loan applications to root out dummy buyers and potential landlords, the realtor said.
Interest subsidies and other favorable lending terms are intended to help people buy first homes to meet self-occupancy needs, the Ministry of Finance has said, adding it would take action against those who contravene the rules.
A separate survey last week by Cathay Real Estate Development Co (國泰建設) showed that presale and new house projects in the April-to-June quarter more than doubled to NT$557.5 billion (US$16.97 billion) from three months earlier.
Selling prices averaged NT$530,300 per ping (3.3m2) nationwide, an increase of 6.7 percent from a quarter earlier, Cathay Real Estate Development said, adding that the 30-day sales rate climbed 5.22 percentage points to 22.12 percent.
Taiwan’s rapid economic growth lent support to the upturn in the presale and new housing market by measure of project volume, sales rates and selling prices, it said.
The gauge on price concessions widened 0.31 percentage points to 6.38 percent, still within a healthy range, it said.
Cathay Real Estate Development said that it is optimistic the improvement would continue, but warned that the central bank might introduce more credit controls to rein in the market.
When an apartment comes up for rent in Germany’s big cities, hundreds of prospective tenants often queue down the street to view it, but the acute shortage of affordable housing is getting scant attention ahead of today’s snap general election. “Housing is one of the main problems for people, but nobody talks about it, nobody takes it seriously,” said Andreas Ibel, president of Build Europe, an association representing housing developers. Migration and the sluggish economy top the list of voters’ concerns, but analysts say housing policy fails to break through as returns on investment take time to register, making the
‘SILVER LINING’: Although the news caused TSMC to fall on the local market, an analyst said that as tariffs are not set to go into effect until April, there is still time for negotiations US President Donald Trump on Tuesday said that he would likely impose tariffs on semiconductor, automobile and pharmaceutical imports of about 25 percent, with an announcement coming as soon as April 2 in a move that would represent a dramatic widening of the US leader’s trade war. “I probably will tell you that on April 2, but it’ll be in the neighborhood of 25 percent,” Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago club when asked about his plan for auto tariffs. Asked about similar levies on pharmaceutical drugs and semiconductors, the president said that “it’ll be 25 percent and higher, and it’ll
CHIP BOOM: Revenue for the semiconductor industry is set to reach US$1 trillion by 2032, opening up opportunities for the chip pacakging and testing company, it said ASE Technology Holding Co (日月光投控), the world’s largest provider of outsourced semiconductor assembly and test (OSAT) services, yesterday launched a new advanced manufacturing facility in Penang, Malaysia, aiming to meet growing demand for emerging technologies such as generative artificial intelligence (AI) applications. The US$300 million facility is a critical step in expanding ASE’s global footprint, offering an alternative for customers from the US, Europe, Japan, South Korea and China to assemble and test chips outside of Taiwan amid efforts to diversify supply chains. The plant, the company’s fifth in Malaysia, is part of a strategic expansion plan that would more than triple
Taiwanese artificial intelligence (AI) server makers are expected to make major investments in Texas in May after US President Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office and amid his rising tariff threats, Taiwan Electrical and Electronic Manufacturers’ Association (TEEMA, 台灣電子電機公會) chairman Richard Lee (李詩欽) said yesterday. The association led a delegation of seven AI server manufacturers to Washington, as well as the US states of California, Texas and New Mexico, to discuss land and tax issues, as Taiwanese firms speed up their production plans in the US with many of them seeing Texas as their top option for investment, Lee said. The
RSS