Existing home transactions in major cities declined 25 percent last month from a year earlier, suggesting the market has yet to hit the bottom, as new property tax measures are expected to clear the legislature tomorrow.
Housing transactions in Taipei, New Taipei City, Taoyuan, Taichung, Tainan and Kaohsiung — which accounted for about 80 percent of sales nationwide — totaled 17,199 units last month.
The figure is the lowest for the same month since the government started the survey in 1999, as prospective buyers turned more conservative ahead of the legislature’s adoption of new property tax plans.
Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) is to host a cross-party discussion on the property tax bill today, so it might be passed by the legislature tomorrow, Minister of Finance Chang Sheng-ford (張盛和) said.
Chang said he was confident over the bill’s smooth passage and that he was to join the discussion to clarify any misunderstandings and rally support.
The bill would levy an income tax rate of between 15 and 45 percent on gains from property transactions in excess of NT$4 million (US$129,360) depending on the length of ownership.
If approved, the new taxes will take effect next year, but will not affect homes already purchased.
Housing transactions in Taipei shrank 33.2 percent year-on-year to 2,151 units last month, while those in New Taipei City fell 34.9 percent to 3,911 units, according to information on the two city governments’ Web sites.
Housing transfers stood at 3,004 units in Taoyuan and 3,416 units in Taichung, representing a retreat of 31 percent and 13.8 percent respectively, according to the two Web sites.
“The market has not yet come out of the woods, judging from the sluggish trading,” Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房屋) spokesman Andy Huang (黃舒衛) said.
The trend will put pressure on sellers to lower prices as prospective buyers refuse to raise their offers, Huang said.
However, sellers in general have not budged much, due to ample liquidity and low borrowing costs, he said.
Transactions also fell 15.9 percent year-on-year to 1,611 units in Tainan and 16.1 percent to 3,106 units in Kaohsiung, government data showed.
However, on a sequential basis, the figures were up 5.4 percent and 13.8 percent respectively from April. Evertrust attributed the increase to relative affordability in the southern cities.
The weak sentiment is likely to persist for a while until the market assimilates the impact of new property taxes after the legislature gives its go-ahead, Huang said.
Sweeping policy changes under US Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr are having a chilling effect on vaccine makers as anti-vaccine rhetoric has turned into concrete changes in inoculation schedules and recommendations, investors and executives said. The administration of US President Donald Trump has in the past year upended vaccine recommendations, with the country last month ending its longstanding guidance that all children receive inoculations against flu, hepatitis A and other diseases. The unprecedented changes have led to diminished vaccine usage, hurt the investment case for some biotechs, and created a drag that would likely dent revenues and
Global semiconductor stocks advanced yesterday, as comments by Nvidia Corp chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) at Davos, Switzerland, helped reinforce investor enthusiasm for artificial intelligence (AI). Samsung Electronics Co gained as much as 5 percent to an all-time high, helping drive South Korea’s benchmark KOSPI above 5,000 for the first time. That came after the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index rose more than 3 percent to a fresh record on Wednesday, with a boost from Nvidia. The gains came amid broad risk-on trade after US President Donald Trump withdrew his threat of tariffs on some European nations over backing for Greenland. Huang further
Macronix International Co (旺宏), the world’s biggest NOR flash memory supplier, yesterday said it would spend NT$22 billion (US$699.1 million) on capacity expansion this year to increase its production of mid-to-low-density memory chips as the world’s major memorychip suppliers are phasing out the market. The company said its planned capital expenditures are about 11 times higher than the NT$1.8 billion it spent on new facilities and equipment last year. A majority of this year’s outlay would be allocated to step up capacity of multi-level cell (MLC) NAND flash memory chips, which are used in embedded multimedia cards (eMMC), a managed
CULPRITS: Factors that affected the slip included falling global crude oil prices, wait-and-see consumer attitudes due to US tariffs and a different Lunar New Year holiday schedule Taiwan’s retail sales ended a nine-year growth streak last year, slipping 0.2 percent from a year earlier as uncertainty over US tariff policies affected demand for durable goods, data released on Friday by the Ministry of Economic Affairs showed. Last year’s retail sales totaled NT$4.84 trillion (US$153.27 billion), down about NT$9.5 billion, or 0.2 percent, from 2024. Despite the decline, the figure was still the second-highest annual sales total on record. Ministry statistics department deputy head Chen Yu-fang (陳玉芳) said sales of cars, motorcycles and related products, which accounted for 17.4 percent of total retail rales last year, fell NT$68.1 billion, or
RSS