Taiwanese aged 50 and older have the strongest interest in buying real estate properties, attracted by their dislike of market volatility, a quarterly survey by Chinatrust Real Estate Co (中信房屋) showed yesterday.
About 47.1 percent of the respondents with plans to buy houses were over 50 years old — up 2 percent from three months earlier — because they are financially better off compared with other age groups, the broker’s chairman Chris Cheng-Yu (鄭余正全) said.
Some of them buy the real estate properties to meet investment needs and others intend to benefit their children, Cheng-Yu said.
The finding corresponds with a sharp increase in purchase interest among retired people to 8.9 percent, doubled from 4.4 percent a quarterly earlier, the poll said.
Cheng-Yu expected retired people aged 50 and older to help boost housing transactions in the coming months after a lackluster market this quarter.
The finding also lent support to the popularity of real estate as the most favored investment vehicle with backing from 43 percent of the respondents, followed by cash at 19.1 percent, insurance at 12.7 percent and precious metal at 10.2 percent, the survey said.
Investment needs drove 35 percent of home trade this quarter, down from 32.5 percent in the preceding quarter. The figure increases to 53.3 percent if houses bought for their children or parents are included, the
survey said.
The special sales levy would not affect 56.4 percent of respondents when it came to property investment. The Ministry of Finance has made plans to tighten the tax that currently subjects houses resold within two years of purchase to a maximum of 15 percent of trading prices.
Only 3.6 percent of respondents said they would channel their property funds abroad if the government were to extend the holding period to three or four years, the survey said.
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