As the economic recovery has brought a lot of orders to Taiwan’s high-tech companies, the real estate market in northern Taiwan’s Hsinchu area — the nation’s high-tech manufacturing base — is expected to benefit most, with both housing prices and trading volumes to set a record by the end of the year, real estate brokerages said.
Real estate agency U-trust (有巢氏房屋) said since high-tech businesses began booming in the first quarter, home purchases and sales in Hsinchu had reached 7,600 in the third quarter, which was a 24 percent rise from the previous quarter.
Liu Pin-yao (劉炳耀), a spokesman of the real estate agency, said he expected the housing trade volume in the technology-based area for the year to not only exceed last year’s volume, but also reach an all-time high.
Liu said housing prices in Jhubei City (竹北), transportation center of Hsinchu County, reached NT$135,000 (US$4,192) per ping (3.3m2) in the second quarter, nearly the same as last year’s high of NT$136,000.
Rising year-end bonuses offered by high-tech companies will help increase homebuying in Hsinchu by the end of the year, he said.
Meanwhile, the real estate market in Hsinchu’s neighbor Taoyuan City also enjoyed growth. The city’s newly developed area around Taoyuan County Arts Park, which will be completed by the end of this year, and the Nankan area (南崁), both saw a growth rate of 40 percent for prices of commercial property in the past two years, he said.
Property prices are also expected to rise in major cities, including Taipei, Taichung and Kaohsiung. Many buyers are believed to be speculators eying Taiwan as a good place to invest in property.
They expect the markets to grow after Taiwan signs a proposed economic cooperation framework agreement (ECFA) with China. Some potential buyers are big domestic and overseas property investors that have started to look for luxury mansions as investment targets in recent months.
Greg Yeh (葉國華), chief consultant at Evertrust Rehouse (永慶房屋), said the firm has received many queries about luxury mansions recently and just closed a more than NT$100 million deal.
Yeh said that based on the experience of Hong Kong’s real estate market, which rose sharply after Hong Kong signed the closer economic partnership arrangement (CEPA) with China in 2003, Taiwan’s market prospects are good.
However, unlike Hong Kong, Taiwan is a democracy and the ruling Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), with an eye on keeping the presidency in the 2012 presidential election, is eager to appease public dissatisfaction over the high prices of property, which make it difficult for young couples, single people, or even couples in their 40s or older to afford to buy their own property. Many are living with their parents or parents-in-law.
A recent survey conducted by the government found unaffordable property prices to be a major complaint of the Taiwanese public, prompting Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) to announce the central government will make plans to build affordable housing near subway lines.
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