The Construction and Planning Agency yesterday signed agreements with four major land developers to start construction of a low-cost housing project near a planned mass rapid transit (MRT) station in New Taipei City’s (新北市) Linkou District (林口).
Pre-sale marketing of the housing project, scheduled for completion in 2014, will begin in June, with each ping (3.3m2) selling for no more than NT$150,000 (US$4,990), the agency said.
The four companies that won the construction bid in July last year are 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).
Photo: Hsu I-ping, Taipei Times
The 3,960-unit project, which will be built near the designated “A7” station of the MRT line connecting Taipei and Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport, is the second phase of the “affordable housing” program launched by the agency.
“We have received countless phone calls from people interested in the ‘affordable housing’ program since [the program was launched] last year,” Construction and Planning Agency Director-General Yeh Shih-wen (葉世文) said at the signing ceremony.
When completed, 3,761 of the units will be sold, while the remaining 199 units will be leased out for no more than NT$250 per ping. The units measure between 30 ping and 50 ping in size, the agency said in a release.
The four land developers promised to utilize high-quality materials and adopt green and energy-saving concepts in building the units, it added.
The first phase of the social housing program consists of 4,480 low-cost units that are being built in Fujhou (浮州), Banciao District (板橋), New Taipei City. Construction started in December last year and pre-sales will begin in April this year.
More than 30,000 people have applied for accreditation to qualify as a potential buyer of the low-cost housing units, with more than 7,000 people confirmed qualified. The agency began accepting applications on Dec. 23 last year.
“We expect the number of qualified applicants to total more than 10,000 after the Lunar New Year holiday,” Yeh said.
The agency will launch new “affordable housing” projects in the second half of the year if the number of qualified applicants exceed 20,000 in the near term, Yeh said.
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