The number of housing transactions dropped 30 percent from December last year to January, partly because of fewer working days. However, home prices remained unresponsive to government measures to trigger a correction, official statistics released yesterday showed.
Home transfers totaled 18,213 units nationwide in January, slumping 30.32 percent from December, worse than at the height of the global financial crisis, according to statistics from the Construction and Planning Agency.
The Greater Taipei area bore the brunt of the fall with transactions shrinking 35 percent in Taipei and 43 percent in New Taipei City, the report said.
Stanley Su (蘇啟榮), head researcher at Sinyi Realty Inc (信義房屋), attributed the sluggish -trading to the Jan. 14 presidential and legislative elections and the nine-day Lunar New Year holiday.
“Fewer working days and political uncertainty curbed trading,” but the passage of a housing transactions registration rule deepened expectations that prices would fall, Su said in a statement.
The transparency requirement which is scheduled to take effect on July 1, is the government’s latest bid to rein in housing prices following the introduction of a special sales levy in June last year.
The levy, better known as the luxury tax, has proved futile so far, with a separate government report showing that the nation’s housing prices averaged NT$9.61 million a unit in the fourth quarter of last year, up slightly from NT$9.57 million a unit three months earlier.
The price rise came even though home transactions dropped 7 -percent from the third quarter and 16 percent from a year earlier, the report found.
Mortgage payments accounted for 34 percent of household income for Taiwanese nationwide in the fourth quarter, unchanged from the third quarter, the report showed.
Chang Chin-oh (張金鶚), a land economics professor at National Chengchi University, who headed the survey, advised prospective home buyers to be patient, saying it would take longer for a price correction to take effect.
Taiwan Realty Co (台灣房屋) said the worst was likely over for the housing market as buying interest showed a significant pickup last month.
H&B Realty Co (住商不動產) concurred, saying home transfers improved by double digits last month compared with January.
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