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Buyers cautious about real estate market: survey

By Crystal Hsu
STAFF REPORTER
Thursday, Jul 17, 2008, Page 12

A leading real estate agency yesterday released survey results indicating that a bearish stock market and surging energy costs have prompted potential home buyers to stay on the sidelines and investors to exit the property market.

The survey, conducted by Evertrust Rehouse Group (永慶房仲集團), found that 63 percent of respondents did not think it would be wise to invest in real estate over the next six months, up from 28 percent in a survey after the March presidential election.

Only 30 percent of the respondents were optimistic about the outlook for the property market, which was the same for the third quarter of last year, Evertrust Rehouse general manager Yeh Lin-chi (葉凌棋) said.

Yeh said the numbers indicated that the public was disappointed by the new government’s performance and was therefore cautious about buying real estate.

Yeh said rising inflationary pressure, the tumbling stock market and increasingly untenable housing prices had all contributed to the gloomy sentiment.

“The [investor] sentiment is to hold out while transactions dwindle substantially unless sellers are willing to lower their prices,” Yeh said.

Chuang Meng-han (莊孟翰), a professor of industrial economics at Tamkang University, said the survey showed that public sentiment had become realistic again after a period of overoptimism following the election.

Chuang said that as many as 80 percent of the respondents in the March survey believed that residential and commercial property prices would soar after the government eased regulations on cross-strait trade and allowed more Chinese tourists to visit Taiwan.

“Even new government officials basked in the euphoria and underestimated the impact of inflation driven by mounting oil and food prices,” Chuang said.

Evertrust Rehouse president Liao Yung-sheng (廖永勝) said the survey showed a considerable number of investors had left the market as profit margins fell and the central bank was expected to raise interest rates later this year to contain inflation that is expected to keep climbing.

Crude oil hit US$147 a barrel this week, while the Consumer Price Index jumped 4.97 percent year-on-year last month, Liao said.

However, Liao said demand for residential housing remained high among first-time buyers, who comprised more than 46 percent of the market — the highest since the agency conducted the survey for the first time in 2006.

The agent said he believed that investor sentiment would reverse once consumer confidence recovers.

“Real estate is relatively resistant to inflation, compared with other investment options,” Liao said. “But it will be a buyer’s market, allowing greater room for negotiating prices.”

The survey polled 1,390 people between June 23 and June 30 with a margin of error of plus or minus 2.62 percent, Evertrust Rehouse said.
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