Four major land developers yesterday won an auction for four state-owned plots of land reserved for low-cost housing units near a planned mass rapid transit (MRT) station linking Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport and downtown Taipei, the Construction and Planning Agency said.
Farglory Land Development Co (遠雄建設), Huang Hsiang Construction Co (皇翔建設), Lih Pao Construction Co (麗寶建設) and Advancetek Enterprise Co (名軒開發) won the plots with bids more than double the asking price, construction agency head Yeh Shih-wen (葉世文) said.
The winning bidders offered NT$234,000 (US$8,420) to NT$265,000 per ping (3.3m2), higher than the floor price of NT$150,000, for the four plots totaling 9.81 hectares of land intended for low-cost housing complexes in Linkou Special District, Yeh said.
The plots are part of the government’s fair-housing program to tame soaring housing prices in Greater Taipei.
Only middle and low income buyers without a home are eligible to apply to buy the 4,300 housing units, which will cost between NT$4.5 million and NT$7.5 million for 30 ping to 50 ping units, Yeh said.
Qualified buyers can file -applications at the end of the year or early next year when the housing units are put on the presale market. Farglory Development executive vice president Huang Chih-hung (黃志鴻) said the company expects to make reasonable earnings from building the low-cost homes, given low land costs and quick sales.
“We’re delighted at the outcome of the auction” Huang said by telephone.
Stanley Su (蘇啟榮), head researcher at Sinyi Realty Co (信義房屋), the nation’s only listed real-estate broker, said the Linkou project would be popular because new housing units cost more than NT$200,000 per ping in similar locations.
It will take 30 minute from the proposed housing complexes to downtown Taipei after work on an extension of the mass rapid transit system to the airport is completed in 2014.
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