The central bank on Wednesday unveiled amnesty measures to spare real estate inheritors, people with relocation needs and back deals from the credit controls it introduced on Sept. 18.
The move came less than a month after the monetary policymaker significantly tightened lending terms to avoid an overconcentration of house loans and a housing bubble.
Central bank Governor Yang Chin-long (楊金龍) had promised lawmakers to make exceptions for innocent home buyers after many protested that the latest credit control measures would deny them necessary funding, especially for presale and new houses that are soon to be delivered.
Photo: CNA
People who need to move because of a job or family-size changes also would have faced a cash crunch if they had put down a down payment equivalent to 50 percent of the house value.
Alan Pan (潘榮耀), director general of the central bank’s banking department, told a media briefing that first-time mortgage applicants could qualify for grace periods and house loans of up to 85 percent, even if they had already inherited real estate.
“The main difference is the access to grace periods for this group,” Pan said.
The central bank previously denied this group grace periods even though some only had partial ownership of real estate as a result of inheritance.
Pan said people with relocation needs could qualify for lending terms as first-home buyers if they sign an affidavit stating they would sell their old house within a year. Violators would have their favorable lending terms rescinded and need to return the difference in interest payments and pay a higher down payment, he said.
The loan-to-value ratio is 50 percent for second mortgages, 40 percent for third mortgages and 30 percent for fourth mortgages and luxury houses.
In addition, the central bank moved to spare people who had signed purchase agreements prior to the introduction of the credit controls to prevent panic sell-offs, Pan said.
Buyers of presale house projects could also opt to terminate the purchase agreements even though existing rules ban their transfer, he said.
House brokers have had mixed reactions to the exclusionary measures, but are on the same page that they want to reverse a slowdown in the housing market.
H&B Realty Co (住商不動產) said the one-year requirement is too harsh for people with relocation needs because people spend more time finding buyers, while Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房屋) welcomed the exemption on back deals, but predicted that a slowdown ahead remains inevitable due to strict lending terms.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said that its investment plan in Arizona is going according to schedule, following a local media report claiming that the company is planning to break ground on its third wafer fab in the US in June. In a statement, TSMC said it does not comment on market speculation, but that its investments in Arizona are proceeding well. TSMC is investing more than US$65 billion in Arizona to build three advanced wafer fabs. The first one has started production using the 4-nanometer (nm) process, while the second one would start mass production using the
A TAIWAN DEAL: TSMC is in early talks to fully operate Intel’s US semiconductor factories in a deal first raised by Trump officials, but Intel’s interest is uncertain Broadcom Inc has had informal talks with its advisers about making a bid for Intel Corp’s chip-design and marketing business, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter. Nothing has been submitted to Intel and Broadcom could decide not to pursue a deal, according to the Journal. Bloomberg News earlier reported that Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is in early talks for a controlling stake in Intel’s factories at the request of officials at US President Donald Trump’s administration, as the president looks to boost US manufacturing and maintain the country’s leadership in critical technologies. Trump officials raised 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
RSS