With wage growth stagnant, a majority of fathers said home mortgage loans are currently a heavier burden than they were for earlier generations. Mortgage payments now represent the single largest monthly household expense, a survey by a local real estate agency found.
The U-trust (有巢氏房屋) survey, which polled 853 fathers between July 30 and Thursday, said that 91.5 percent believed the burden of mortgage debts was greater than in the past, with 63.5 percent saying home loans were their single largest item of monthly household expenditure.
“Since pay raises don’t come easily these days, it will take longer [for young homeowners] to pay off their mortgage debt,” Liu Pin-yao (劉炳耀), a spokesman for the real estate agency, said in the report.
“Although mortgage interest rates are still at record low levels, many double-income households in Taipei City pay between NT$30,000 and NT$40,000 for home loans,” Liu said.
The realtor said that although measures taken by the central bank to tighten credit might lead to a correction in housing prices in the greater Taipei area in the second half of this year, the market remains highly liquid and that has scared away many home buyers.
The survey also found that 65.2 percent of the respondents said they take into consideration the living environment for their children when buying a new house, while 51.4 percent thought that it would be better to own their own house than to rent one.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
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
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