Taiwanese expect housing prices to decline in the coming six months and will stay on the sidelines until they see a clear market correction, a quarterly survey by Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房屋) indicated yesterday.
The survey suggests a sluggish market this quarter and next as sellers remain reluctant to soften prices, while buyers delay purchasing decisions.
The sentiment changed little after President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) victory in the Jan. 14 presidential election and ensuing Lunar New Year holidays, the survey found.
A total of 53 percent of the respondents expect a price correction, compared with 55 percent before the election, according to the survey.
The survey was conducted first from Jan. 1 to Jan. 14 and again from Jan. 16 to Jan. 30.
The survey showed the election had a very limited impact on the housing market, Evertrust head researcher Jeffry Huang (黃增幅) said one week after Sinyi Realty Inc (信義房屋) unveiled similar findings.
A price drop from 10 to 15 percent would motivate 43 percent of respondents in Taipei to enter the market and 52 percent in New Taipei City (新北市) to follow suit, the survey said.
Buying interest climbed to 55 percent in Taoyuan, Hsinchu and Miaoli counties and 61 percent in central and southern Taiwan, the survey indicated.
The figures would consolidate the standoff between buyers and sellers, as housing prices have held steady in the greater Taipei area since the imposition of a special sales levy in June last year, Huang said.
“A price drop is even more unlikely once the global financial market stabilizes,” Huang said, adding that low interest rates and excess liquidity have also helped sustain housing prices.
Greg Yeh (葉國華), an adviser with Evertrust’s luxury home division, said cooling transactions for upscale housing units have more to do with scarce supply than weakening demand.
“Many wealthy Taiwanese wish to own luxury homes in the prime Xinyi (信義) and Da-an districts (大安), but very few can be found on the market,” Yeh said.
The luxury home segment may see an increase in supply from the third quarter onward as some investors would be spared from the luxury tax after meeting the two-year clause, Yeh said.
The luxury tax, which is intended to curb property speculation, subjects houses resold within two years of purchase to a levy of up to 15 percent of trading prices.
Quanta Computer Inc (廣達) chairman Barry Lam (林百里) is expected to share his views about the artificial intelligence (AI) industry’s prospects during his speech at the company’s 37th anniversary ceremony, as AI servers have become a new growth engine for the equipment manufacturing service provider. Lam’s speech is much anticipated, as Quanta has risen as one of the world’s major AI server suppliers. The company reported a 30 percent year-on-year growth in consolidated revenue to NT$1.41 trillion (US$43.35 billion) last year, thanks to fast-growing demand for servers, especially those with AI capabilities. The company told investors in November last year that
Intel Corp has named Tasha Chuang (莊蓓瑜) to lead Intel Taiwan in a bid to reinforce relations between the company and its Taiwanese partners. The appointment of Chuang as general manager for Intel Taiwan takes effect on Thursday, the firm said in a statement yesterday. Chuang is to lead her team in Taiwan to pursue product development and sales growth in an effort to reinforce the company’s ties with its partners and clients, Intel said. Chuang was previously in charge of managing Intel’s ties with leading Taiwanese PC brand Asustek Computer Inc (華碩), which included helping Asustek strengthen its global businesses, the company
Taiwanese suppliers to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC, 台積電) are expected to follow the contract chipmaker’s step to invest in the US, but their relocation may be seven to eight years away, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) said yesterday. When asked by opposition Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Niu Hsu-ting (牛煦庭) in the legislature about growing concerns that TSMC’s huge investments in the US will prompt its suppliers to follow suit, Kuo said based on the chipmaker’s current limited production volume, it is unlikely to lead its supply chain to go there for now. “Unless TSMC completes its planned six
United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電) forecast that its wafer shipments this quarter would grow up to 7 percent sequentially and the factory utilization rate would rise to 75 percent, indicating that customers did not alter their ordering behavior due to the US President Donald Trump’s capricious US tariff policies. However, the uncertainty about US tariffs has weighed on the chipmaker’s business visibility for the second half of this year, UMC chief financial officer Liu Chi-tung (劉啟東) said at an online earnings conference yesterday. “Although the escalating trade tensions and global tariff policies have increased uncertainty in the semiconductor industry, we have not
RSS