Institutional investors are gearing up to explore profit opportunities in Taiwan's large-area office buildings, industrial lands and even high-end residential properties, a leading commercial property broker said yesterday.
"They are keen on investment targets such as Grade-A office buildings, service apartments, three-star-and-up hotels with at least 100 rooms, as well as distressed assets," said Andrew Liu (
Bottomed out
Liu said the property market has not only bottomed out, but there is also room for institutional investors to benefit from the market's future upside.
Among those institutional investors, Liu said that foreign asset management companies (AMCs) have expressed interest in investing in high-end residential properties.
Foreign AMCs had previously helped to write off NT$700 billion in property-backed non-performing loans, according to government statistics.
Multinational insurance companies and private equity funds are also targeting property investments with returns of above five percent, he added.
According to Liu, CBRE itself is currently in the midst of five deals valued at NT$30 billion in the greater Taipei area.
The company hopes to close these deals before the first half of next year.
Citing confidentiality clauses signed with clients, Liu yesterday refused to identify which these five deals are, saying only that they include two office buildings for sale in Taipei and two industrial lands that will be auctioned off.
China factor
In contrast to Liu's bullish view, another senior property consultant -- who preferred not to be identified -- yesterday expressed a bearish view toward the property market.
He said that "given current cross-strait tensions, there won't be any enthusiastic institutional investors gearing up to profit from the local real-estate market."
Most multinationals and his high-end customers are making inquiries about the property markets in Shanghai and Beijing, "not Taiwan," the consultant said.
Despite these opposing views, Liu and his visiting Shanghai-based counterpart Alan Lee (
Liu said that the company's Taipei office is looking at business opportunities from China-based Taiwanese medium and large-size businesses, including eight financial service companies that may soon set up branch offices in Shanghai.
The company, therefore, has set up China desks in both its Taipei offices and its Shanghai branch to see to Taiwanese businesspeople's real-estate needs.
Lee, managing director of CBRE's Shanghai office, yesterday further challenged a market observation that Shanghai's property market bubble may burst.
"The market in Shanghai may be experiencing a slowdown, but an uptrend is still foreseeable since the central government's plan to cool down its over-heated economy has had limited impact," Lee said.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
US CONSCULTANT: The US Department of Commerce’s Ursula Burns is a rarely seen US government consultant to be put forward to sit on the board, nominated as an independent director Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday nominated 10 candidates for its new board of directors, including Ursula Burns from the US Department of Commerce. It is rare that TSMC has nominated a US government consultant to sit on its board. Burns was nominated as one of seven independent directors. She is vice chair of the department’s Advisory Council on Supply Chain Competitiveness. Burns is to stand for election at TSMC’s annual shareholders’ meeting on June 4 along with the rest of the candidates. TSMC chairman Mark Liu (劉德音) was not on the list after in December last