Housing transactions in Taiwan’s six special municipalities last month shrank 8 percent from a month earlier as loan restrictions appeared to bear fruit in slowing the market, real-estate brokerages said on Monday.
Deals totaled 24,527 units in the six special municipalities of Taipei, New Taipei City, Taoyuan, Taichung, Tainan and Kaohsiung, brokerages said, citing data from local land administrations.
On an annual basis, transactions in the six regions rose 21 percent from a year earlier, the data showed.
Photo: Hsu Yi-ping, Taipei Times
Sinyi Realty Inc (信義房屋) attributed the month-on-month decline to a cash crunch as banks slow or shun mortgage applications to comply with a rule to keep home and construction loans at 30 percent of their deposits and debt issuance combined.
The self-imposed restrictions took effect after the central bank last month asked lenders to submit quantitative control measures by the end of this week detailing how they would limit mortgages without affecting urban renewal projects or first homes for self-occupancy.
As of June 30, real-estate lending — including for renovations — had approached 37.43 percent of total loans, the central bank said last week.
Deals in Taichung tumbled 16 percent monthly to 4,996 units, while in Taipei they fell 13 percent to 2,560 units, government data showed.
Transactions in New Taipei City and Taoyuan softened 4 percent and 5 percent to 5,747 units and 4,727 units respectively, while in Kaohsiung they slipped 8 percent to 3,987 units, the data showed.
Tainan bucked the trend with an 8 percent monthly increase to 2,510 units, the data showed.
Mortgage applications take several months, compared with one month previously, and some banks charge interest rates of 3 percent, compared with 1.775 percent for first homes.
Other banks are turning down new mortgage applications altogether to avoid riling the central bank, which might introduce new credit controls on Sept. 19 if loans grow unchecked.
The cash crunch has stirred unease among home buyers and prompted President William Lai (賴清德) to suggest in an interview that lenders should not overreact.
Lai’s campaign promise to help people buy their first home through interest subsidies and other favorable lending terms is widely believed to have revived a housing boom and propelled house loans.
Central bank Governor Yang Chin-long (楊金龍) on Monday met with bank presidents, telling them that eight state-run lenders have NT$800 billion (US$24.95 billion) on hand for mortgages.
The Financial Supervisory Commission yesterday said that real-estate lending stood at 26.47 percent of overall deposits, meaning there is room for more mortgages.
An uptick of 1 percentage point would release NT$558.5 billion based on the system’s total deposits of NT$55.85 trillion, the commission said, urging banks to expedite loan considerations for people seeking to buy their first home.
Napoleon Osorio is proud of being the first taxi driver to have accepted payment in bitcoin in the first country in the world to make the cryptocurrency legal tender: El Salvador. He credits Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s decision to bank on bitcoin three years ago with changing his life. “Before I was unemployed... And now I have my own business,” said the 39-year-old businessman, who uses an app to charge for rides in bitcoin and now runs his own car rental company. Three years ago the leader of the Central American nation took a huge gamble when he put bitcoin
TECH RACE: The Chinese firm showed off its new Mate XT hours after the latest iPhone launch, but its price tag and limited supply could be drawbacks China’s Huawei Technologies Co (華為) yesterday unveiled the world’s first tri-foldable phone, as it seeks to expand its lead in the world’s biggest smartphone market and steal the spotlight from Apple Inc hours after it debuted a new iPhone. The Chinese tech giant showed off its new Mate XT, which users can fold three ways like an accordion screen door, during a launch ceremony in Shenzhen. The Mate XT comes in red and black and has a 10.2-inch display screen. At 3.6mm thick, it is the world’s slimmest foldable smartphone, Huawei said. The company’s Web site showed that it has garnered more than
Demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips should spur growth for the semiconductor industry over the next few years, the CEO of a major supplier to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) said, dismissing concerns that investors had misjudged the pace and extent of spending on AI. While the global chip market has grown about 8 percent annually over the past 20 years, AI semiconductors should grow at a much higher rate going forward, Scientech Corp (辛耘) chief executive officer Hsu Ming-chi (許明琪) told Bloomberg Television. “This booming of the AI industry has just begun,” Hsu said. “For the most prominent
PARTNERSHIPS: TSMC said it has been working with multiple memorychip makers for more than two years to provide a full spectrum of solutions to address AI demand Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said it has been collaborating with multiple memorychip makers in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) used in artificial intelligence (AI) applications for more than two years, refuting South Korean media report's about an unprecedented partnership with Samsung Electronics Co. As Samsung is competing with TSMC for a bigger foundry business, any cooperation between the two technology heavyweights would catch the eyes of investors and experts in the semiconductor industry. “We have been working with memory partners, including Micron, Samsung Memory and SK Hynix, on HBM solutions for more than two years, aiming to advance 3D integrated circuit