Land developers are expected to launch more than NT$100 billion (US$3.46 billion) in new construction projects this month and next month, indicating that the lunar “Ghost Month,” when people are traditionally more reticent about conducting business, did not impair the nation’s property market, property analysts said yesterday.
Major land developers, including Farglory Land Development Co (遠雄建設) and Kindom Construction Corp (冠德建設), are rolling out NT$106.1 billion worth of new home projects in New Taipei City (新北市) and Taoyuan County despite Ghost Month, which falls between July 31 and Aug. 28 this year.
“The impact of Ghost Month, during which people are advised against getting married, traveling and moving into new homes, is diminishing,” Chinese-language Housing Monthly (住展雜誌) spokesman Ni Tzu-jen (倪子仁) said by telephone.
Ni said the trend is more evident in the pre-sale housing segment of the market, as it takes two years to complete construction.
Farglory Development is set to launch a NT$50 billion pre-sale home project in Zhonghe District (中和), New Taipei City this weekend and unveil a NT$4 billion undertaking in Taoyuan County next month.
Kindom Construction Corp (冠德建設) plans to market NT$4.5 billion in pre-sale homes in Sanchong District (三重), New Taipei City, while Sanyuan Group (三圓建設) is to roll out a new construction project valued at NT$3.4 billion in Xindian District (新店).
“The pricing strategy for those new projects will attract much scrutiny as the market is still trying to digest the impact of the luxury tax,” Ni said.
The levy, intended to curb soaring housing prices, subjects houses resold within two years of purchase to a tax of up to 15 percent of its transaction value.
The measure has cooled down the housing market, but so far failed to trigger a price correction, Ni said.
Shining Building Business Co (鄉林建設) recently launched an aggressive advertisement campaign to promote its newly completed luxury homes in Taichung. Shining chairman Lai Cheng-yi (賴正鎰) said Ghost Month did not impact the company’s marketing strategy.
“Rather, we are upbeat about the housing market after Taiwan’s opening to independent Chinese tourists [on June 28],” Lai said.
The influence of Ghost Month on second-hand home transactions is also fading.
Jessica Hsu (徐佳馨), head researcher at H&B Realty (住商不動產), the nation’s largest real-estate broker by number of franchises, said that housing deals in the “inauspicious” Ghost Month dipped a modest 5 percent in recent years compared with other months of the year.
“As the nation becomes more urbanized, Ghost Month has become less relevant in home purchase decisions,” Hsu said by telephone.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by