Following the planned inking of a trade pact with China, the nation’s residential property market is poised to embrace international buyers, which has provided a boost to property prices including for luxury homes, realtors said yesterday.
The inflow of capital from China has greatly accelerated to total US$34.82 million in the first four months of this year, compared with US$37.49 million for the whole of last year, Jeffrey Huang (黃增福), an assistant manager at Evertrust Rehouse Co’s (永慶房屋) research and development department, told a media briefing yesterday, citing statistics from the Investment Commission.
Huang also said properties in Taiwan have become more attractive than their counterparts in Hong Kong and Singapore, given their price valuation.
In Taipei City, a total of 5,979 properties changed hands last month, representing a 20 percent growth year-on-year and was the second-highest monthly volume this year after 6,395 transactions in January, said Huang, citing the city government’s latest statistics.
Among the city’s 12 districts, the number of property transactions in Wanhua District (萬華) saw the biggest jump — 55 percent — month-on-month last month, followed by a 32.7 percent increase in Nangang District (南港) and 22 percent in Xinyi District (信義), the government’s data showed.
Despite market concerns about a property price correction in the second half of the year, Credit Suisse analyst Sidney Yeh (葉昌明) said in a client note yesterday that prices in Taipei’s pre-sale market will hold up well, thanks to tight supply in the primary market.
“We anticipate estate prices to be flattish in the second half of the year, following an 8 percent to 10 percent increase in the first half,” Yeh said, citing a 20 percent drop in new supply in the first half from the 2005 to 2008 average.
Meanwhile, Chinese-language Housing Monthly’s estimates showed that the city’s 12 luxury housing projects have averaged a rise of between 21 percent and 150 percent compared with closing prices between 1998 and last year.
For example, the unit price at the luxury project on Minshui Road by JUT Land Development Group (忠泰建設) has jumped by 150 percent from NT$600,000 (US$18,554) per ping in 2000 to NT$1.5 million now, followed by a 146 percent hike in the unit price of another project on Xinyi Road by Fubon Land Development Co (富邦建設), which currently averages NT$1.8 million per ping, it said.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY KEVIN CHEN
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