Taiwan's real estate market continued to show signs of a slowdown, with indicators flashing yellow-blue for the first quarter of the year, according to a quarterly report released yesterday by the Architecture and Building Research Institute.
This marked the fourth consecutive quarter in which a yellow-blue light had appeared, indicating sluggishness in the property market, the report said.
The overall monitoring score dropped to 8 in the first quarter, the lowest level since the first quarter of 2002, the report showed.
The composite index of leading indicators — a barometer of the market’s outlook for the coming two quarters — stood at 101.51 in the first quarter, down 0.88 percent from the fourth quarter of last year.
Meanwhile, the index of coincident indicators, which represents the current environment, declined 1.66 percent to 99.11.
According to a survey conducted by the institute from May 10 to May 31, among businesses involved in the real estate sector, 59.7 percent of respondents thought the property market in the first quarter was worse off than the previous quarter, while only 12.4 percent thought the situation was better.
However, 24 percent of respondents predicted the situation would improve in the second quarter and 48 percent predicted it would be better in the third quarter.
Chang Chin-oh (張金鶚), a professor at National Chengchi University’s Department of Land Economics, said that rising fuel prices and electricity rates were eroding real income, which weakened purchasing power and the ability to buy homes.
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