Property-market rebound seen

Residential property sales continue to grow at a stable rate in Taipei, with the pre-sale housing market in particular beginning to show signs of a quick recovery, analysts said yesterday.

"The value of the local [pre-sale housing] market may grow from the current NT$60 billion to an estimated NT$80 billion by the middle of October," Jim Shih (師絢傑), a researcher with the Housing Monthly (住展雜誌), said yesterday.

Shih said that the Cabinet's recent decision to extend its preferential-mortgage policy with a budget of NT$280 billion appeared to effectively boost real-estate transactions, including unfinished properties that are due to be completed within the next two years.

People looking to buy property have to go for to-be-built properties since there are few finished properties available on the market, Shih added.

According to Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房屋), the nation's second largest real-estate broker, 80 percent of 143,000 newly-built properties in greater Taipei were sold as of the first quarter.

There are now fewer than 15,000 finished properties in Taipei on the market, while the supply of pre-sale houses is on the rise, Evertrust manager Chen Yun-ru (陳韻如) said yesterday.

Sharing a similarly optimistic view, Cynthia Chu (朱幸兒), a director with DTZ Debenham Tie Leung International Property Advisers (戴得梁行), said the pre-sale housing market, particularly in greater Taipei, began to turn around at the beginning of the third quarter.

"Unlike the market's stagnancy in the first two quarters, there's little room for negotiation now even though the prices of some pre-sale projects remain as high as NT$600,000 [per ping]," Chu said.

With good locations, housing projects launched by well-known developers such as Yunta Construction Development Co (元大建設) and Metropolitan Construction Co (大都市建設) have attracted a stream of homebuyers, she said.

Metropolitan general manager Hung Chia-sheng (洪嘉昇) said yesterday that developers began to experience a turnaround in the pre-sale market early this year.

"It used to take five months to close [pre-sale] projects valued at NT$2 billion, but now it takes less than two months," Hung said.

Hung said that the company completely sold out one of its pre-sale property projects in Tienmu, which was launched last month and featured 40 to-be-built homes priced between NT$40 million and NT$60 million each.

The public's confidence in the local property market has recovered strongly and there is great interest in new properties that feature modern construction concepts, design and materials, Hung added.

But Chen is less optimistic. She said that 85 percent of potential buyers are shopping for residential homes priced below NT$10 million so that they can move in right away.

Unless pre-sale properties are reasonably priced with good locations and competitive characteristics, homebuyers usually won't wait up to two years for the construction to be completed, Chen said.

She also said the upcoming presidential election and implementation of direct links across the Taiwan Strait may still pose a threat to the local property market, making buyers reluctant to invest.