The National Property Administration yesterday auctioned a 72 ping (238m? plot of land on Xinsheng S Road in Taipei for NT$202 million (US$6.3 million), or NT$2.8 million per ping.
The figure marks the second-highest price per ping for a residential property, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房屋) said in a press statement. It also represented a 125 percent premium on the property’s asking price of NT$89.6 million, with as many as 20 bidders participating, the firm said.
The highest price on record for a residential property was NT$2.88 million per ping, made at an auction two years ago for a 101 ping plot of land nearby.
“Obviously, either land developers or individual investors are very upbeat about the prospect of properties located in the city’s Daan District (大安),” the realtor said.
In related news, the Chinese-language Housing Monthly yesterday reported that, hurt by the recent economic slump, new housing projects launched in northern Taiwan plunged 20 percent year-on-year to NT$657.8 billion last year.
However, the monthly was upbeat about prospects this year, forecasting that new housing projects in northern Taiwan would reach NT$800 billion. It also projected that new housing launches in Taichung and Kaohsiung would rise to NT$100 billion and NT$50 billion respectively.
In Taipei, residential property prices could rise by another 3 percent to 10 percent this year, it said in a statement.
With prices in Taipei continuing to rise, prospective home buyers are likely to turn their interest to Taipei County, it said.
The monthly said that 15,044 Taipei residents moved out of the city in the first 11 months of last year — the highest in a decade.
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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