Residential real estate transactions in Taipei City shrank 24 percent to hit an 18-month low last month, approaching a level they last saw at the onset of the global financial crisis in 2008 after the central bank introduced tightening measures in June to cool the property market, Sinyi Realty Co (信義房屋) said in a report yesterday.
Housing transactions totaled 3,850 units in the capital city last month, compared with 5,085 units in July, according to Sinyi Realty, the nation’s only listed brokerage.
Stanley Su (蘇啟榮), a senior researcher at the company, attributed the fall to the central bank’s introduction of selective credit controls in June that capping second-home mortgage loans at 70 percent of property values and canceling a grace period for principal payments for housing units in Taipei City and 10 popular areas in Taipei County.
“The size of the drop is rare for recent years, except during the economic downturn,” Su said, adding that on average, transactions typically retreat 10 percent in the third quarter, as it is considered the slow season.
Songshan District (松山) saw the biggest drop at 43 percent from a month earlier, followed by Wenshan District (文山) at 40 percent and Neihu District (內湖) at 33 percent, the report 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