The long-depressed property market is showing signs of recovery, though the big amount of vacant houses continue to be a damper, according to a report on the second quarter's real-estate performance released yesterday.
The report, prepared by the Architecture & Building Research Institute under the Ministry of the Interior, said the property market has completely bottomed out in the second quarter and is expected to show a slow upturn in the next two quarters.
"The real-estate market is surely moving up but is not as strong as has been expected, since there are still plenty of vacant properties available," the institute's director-general Hsiao Chiang-pi (
Compared to the first quarter, the nation's index of leading property indicators increased by 1.91 percent to 103 points in the second quarter. Property prices in central and southern Taiwan continue to decline, however, which slightly dragged down the composite index by 0.43 percent to 95.28 points, according to the report.
The government's construction licenses grants to land developers in the second quarter rose by 11.65 percent from the previous quarter, while that of operation licenses issued upon completion of buildings rose by 4.64 percent, according to government statistics.
But the improvement in the property sector may be short-lived if property developers continue launching new projects, an economist warned yesterday.
"We're cautiously optimistic about the property market's expected recovery in the third and fourth quarters," said Chang Chin-oh (張金顎), a land economics professor at National Chengchi University.
He urged the nation's construction developers to be patient and refrain from hastily launching housing projects and so oversupply the market.
"The property market in Taipei is steadily turning upward but the markets in central and southern Taiwan remain stagnant," Chang said.
He also suggested to potential buyers not to rush to make down payments on planned properties.
"It's irrational," he said.
Even so, the institute's report is a sign of recovery in the property sector, which should reach full recovery in the second quarter of next year after the presidential elections, Chang said.
Referring to a survey conducted by the institute in August, Chang said the poll found that real-estate developers' and the public's confidence in the local property market performance for the second half of this year is gaining stronger momentum than the market's actual performance.
Over 54 percent of the polled companies in the real-estate sector, including construction firms, brokers and land appraisers, expressed confidence in the market's recovery in the third and fourth quarters while also expecting a hike in property prices, Chang said.
The expected property recovery will subsist on the nation's improving economic fundamentals, he said.
Chang disagreed with a market concern that the local property market may be marginalized after the government opens up direct links between Taiwan and China.
He said that the links are expected to ease cross-strait tensions and facilitate cross-strait business exchange, which would be advantageous to strengthen the nation's economic fundamentals.
"Improving economic fundamentals are always good news to the property market," he said.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to