The government’s recent move to curb soaring housing prices is expected to further stabilize the real-estate market, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房屋) said yesterday.
Amid soaring property prices, the central bank and the Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) said on Monday they would examine local banks’ mortgage programs in an effort to rein in property speculation.
“These measures will affect real estate speculators most, but for long-term investors, the impact will be moderate,” Evertrust chairman Sun Ching-yu (孫慶餘) told reporters.
SQUEEZE
Sun said the government’s mortgage squeeze measures would be beneficial to a “healthy” development of the property market.
Investors reacted negatively to the government’s move, however, with the building material and construction subindex dropping nearly 2 percent yesterday, underperforming the TAIEX, which edged up 0.11 percent.
“Construction [shares] led all major sectors in declining, following reports that the central bank and the FSC would team up to rein in housing prices, as sky-high housing prices have been the No. 1 public discontent in this important election year,” SinoPac Securities Corp (永豐金證券) said in a note yesterday.
Shares of Farglory Land Development Co (遠雄建設), the nation’s largest property developer, dropped 1.5 percent to NT$66, while Cathay Real Estate Development Co (國泰建設) fell 2.7 percent to NT$12.95.
On Monday, the central bank requested that local banks provide details within three days on their mortgage loans, including loan-to-value ratios, loan interest rates and grace periods (the period in which borrowers are allowed to pay only interests without the principal).
REVITALIZE
“The government’s measures will stabilize the housing market and allay public discontent with soaring property prices,” Evertrust general manager Yeh Ling-chi (葉凌棋) said.
Yeh added that extending the public transportation network would also help the slow down the pace of soaring housing prices in Taipei City.
Transportation construction is vital as it will spur land development in Taipei County and therefore solve the long-standing problem of insufficient property supply in Taipei City, he said.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained