The commercial property market staged a strong rebound last quarter, driven mainly by owner-occupancy demand, but the momentum might not be sustained if major players sit on the sidelines amid unfavorable policy moves, brokers said.
Commercial property transactions totaled NT$65.4 billion (US$2.18 billion) during the April-to-June period, an increase of 81 percent from the previous quarter and 16 percent from a year earlier, CBRE Taiwan said, though peers had different figures due to different measurements.
Property consultancies generally limit their survey to deals above certain values.
Investment value would amount to NT$25.3 billion alone if land deals were taken out of the survey, more than double the sum a year earlier, CBRE said.
The consultancy attributed the steep pickup to a recovery in demand for office, factory, hotel and retail space among the technology and retail sectors, though rental yield hovered around 2.2 percent, the lowest in the world, CBRE said.
Adata Technology Inc (威剛科技), DigiLife Technologies Co (台灣微米) and Key Systems Corp (昆盈企業) bought office space in Jhonghe (中和) and Neihu districts (內湖) respectively to meet demand for expanded operations, according to Colliers International, a foreign property broker.
Meanwhile, financial institutions increased real-estate stakes despite tightened investment restrictions, as seen by the purchase by Mercuries Life Insurance Co (三商美邦人壽保險) of a retail building in Ximen District (西門) for NT$3.95 billion, Colliers said.
Alpha Investment Partners, a private equity fund from Singapore, bought an old, idle building on Chingcheng Street of downtown Taipei, reportedly for more than NT$10 billion from the owner of Howard Hotel (福華飯店), Colliers said.
The rebound is not sustainable given the soaring property prices and the government’s continued effort to cool the sector, CBRE Taiwan managing director Joseph Lin (林俊銘) said.
“The market looks poised for a price correction as financial and monetary authorities raise tax burdens on property owners and tighten lending terms,” Lin said, adding that the trend may deepen toward the elections of local administrators in November.
Against the backdrop, life insurers are increasingly steering funds to leasehold deals as well as logistics and tourism businesses, said Jones Lang LaSalle, another international consultancy.
Fubon Life Insurance Co (富邦人壽) won a 50-year leasehold contract for NT$17.28 billion to build an integrated commercial building on a plot of land in the prime Xinyi District (信義) only after the Taipei City Government lowered the asking price by 30 percent.
The plot failed to attract any bidders in three previous auctions, and Fubon was the sole contender in the fourth attempt.
“Joint ventures — featuring private funds to develop government-owned land — might carry significant weight in the property market with land supply diminishing in central locations,” said Tony Chao (趙正義), Jones Lang LaSalle managing director in Taiwan.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained