Record bid may drive up Taipei property prices

Taipei's high property prices may rally further following a record-setting winning bid for a plot of land north of Taipei Railway Station on Thursday.

Taipei-based Huang Hsiang Construction Corp (皇翔建設) edged out eight competing bidders by offering NT$5.34 billion (US$161.09 million), or NT$3.88 million per ping (3.3m2), for a 1,375.77-ping (4,548m2) tract of land at the intersection of Chengde Road and Civic Boulevard.

The winning bid is almost twice the floor price set by the owner -- Taiwan Motor Transport Co (台汽客運).

The offer for the land located in the city's downtown Tatung District (大同) also broke the record set by Rich Development Co (力麟建設), which offered more than NT$2.91 million for a 957.72-ping land in Zhongzheng District (中正) last Saturday.

Huang Hsiang plans to build an upscale residential and commercial complex and will start pre-sales in the first half of next year at the earliest.

"The selling price at the planned complex will certainly be higher than those at current presale properties in the district and will likely drive up housing prices in the area," Sinyi Real Estate Inc (信義房屋), the nation's largest housing agent, said in a research note yesterday.

The prices of properties north of Taipei Railway Station have long trailed those south of the station, where department stores and shops concentrate. But the area is rapidly catching up, as the station serves as a nerve center for railway, high-speed rail, mass rapid transit, long-haul highway and in the future -- airport MRT -- travel.

Banking the business potential brought by this huge and expanding crowd of passengers, several construction companies have started to develop new shopping malls, office buildings, hotels and other entertainment facilities in the area.

The average price of land in the area therefore jumped from NT$1.06 million per ping at the end of last year to yesterday's NT$3.88 million per ping bid -- a 266 percent increase in merely four months, Sinyi Real Estate said.

Huang Hsiang is expected to price its residential units at the future complex at more than NT$400,000 per ping, making it the highest in the district, said Su Chi-jung (蘇啟榮), director of Sinyi Real Estate's planning division.

Market had it that Huang Hsiang planned to sell the units for NT$600,000 per ping and pocket NT$12 billion in total.

Given Huang Hsiang's high yields and brisk sales, Mega International Investment Services Co (兆豐投顧) has a "buy" rating on the stock with a price target of NT$117.

That represents a 46.6 percent upside from Huang Hsiang's closing price of NT$79.8 on the Taiwan Stock Exchange yesterday.

Huang Hsiang posted a net profit of NT$2.25 billion, or NT$11.17 per share, last year, more than double its earnings of NT$954.44 million, or NT$5.22 per share, in 2005.