Delpha Construction Co (大華建設) yesterday unveiled a presale luxury housing project in Taipei’s Neihu District (內湖), unfazed by credit control measures that are depressing luxury home sales.
The project consists of 109 apartments measuring between 60 ping (198m2) and 100 ping, and priced less than NT$1 million (US$33,500) per ping, lower than the NT$1.2 million per ping touted by a project near the construction site of the American Institute in Taiwan’s new office compound in the same district.
The project could generate NT$8 billion in revenue and is the Taipei-based developer’s only project this year, Delpha chairman Neil Lin (林文亮) said.
The company is also weighing projects in New Taipei City (新北市) and Taoyuan because of the firm’s familiarity with these areas, Lin said.
“I feel more comfortable doing business in northern Taiwan,” he added.
Lin said he was not worried by sluggish luxury home sales and likened such properties to a work of art that will eventually find its way to the right collector.
Moreover, the construction team responsible for the nation’s most expensive residential compound, The Palace (帝寶), is cooperating with Delpha on the project, Lin added.
The launch of Delpha’s new project came after a survey valued new constructions in northern Taiwan at NT$293.9 billion during a promotional campaign period covering this month and next month, rising 45.5 percent from a year earlier.
Chu Wen-yu (祝文宇), chairman of Jay San Lin Construction Co (甲山林), which is brokering Delpha’s Neihu project, said the market for new homes could experience a solid recovery in volume and value this year.
“Real estate remains the favored investment tool, and luxury homes in popular locations will continue to attract buyers,” Chu said.
Jay San Lin helped broker NT$73 billion of new home sales last year, Chu said, forecasting that this year’s figure would be more than NT$100 billion, given the sharp increase in interest from buyers after last month’s Lunar New Year holiday.
Chu said he welcomed the recent appointment of land economics academic Chang Chin-oh (張金顎) as Taipei deputy mayor and hoped that Chang would offer a more realistic understanding of the market.
Chang has advocated drastic tightening measures to induce a price correction after many people complained about the increasing unaffordability of housing in the capital.
“It would be a major challenge for politicians to seek to influence the market’s direction, which is based on solid economic fundamentals and the effect of interest rates,” Chu said.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to