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.
TECH TITAN: Pandemic-era demand for semiconductors turbocharged the nation’s GDP per capita to surpass South Korea’s, but it still remains half that of Singapore Taiwan is set to surpass South Korea this year in terms of wealth for the first time in more than two decades, marking a shift in Asia’s economic ranks made possible by the ascent of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電). According to the latest forecasts released on Thursday by the central bank, Taiwan’s GDP is expected to expand 4.55 percent this year, a further upward revision from the 4.45 percent estimate made by the statistics bureau last month. The growth trajectory puts Taiwan on track to exceed South Korea’s GDP per capita — a key measure of living standards — a
Samsung Electronics Co shares jumped 4.47 percent yesterday after reports it has won approval from Nvidia Corp for the use of advanced high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, which marks a breakthrough for the South Korean technology leader. The stock closed at 83,500 won in Seoul, the highest since July 31 last year. Yesterday’s gain comes after local media, including the Korea Economic Daily, reported that Samsung’s 12-layer HBM3E product recently passed Nvidia’s qualification tests. That clears the components for use in the artificial intelligence (AI) accelerators essential to the training of AI models from ChatGPT to DeepSeek (深度求索), and finally allows Samsung
READY TO HELP: Should TSMC require assistance, the government would fully cooperate in helping to speed up the establishment of the Chiayi plant, an official said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said its investment plans in Taiwan are “unchanged” amid speculation that the chipmaker might have suspended construction work on its second chip packaging plant in Chiayi County and plans to move equipment arranged for the plant to the US. The Chinese-language Economic Daily News reported earlier yesterday that TSMC had halted the construction of the chip packaging plant, which was scheduled to be completed next year and begin mass production in 2028. TSMC did not directly address whether construction of the plant had halted, but said its investment plans in Taiwan remain “unchanged.” The chipmaker started
MORTGAGE WORRIES: About 34% of respondents to a survey said they would approach multiple lenders to pay for a home, while 29.2% said they would ask family for help New housing projects in Taiwan’s six special municipalities, as well as Hsinchu city and county, are projected to total NT$710.65 billion (US$23.61 billion) in the upcoming fall sales season, a record 30 percent decrease from a year earlier, as tighter mortgage rules prompt developers to pull back, property listing platform 591.com (591新建案) said yesterday. The number of projects has also fallen to 312, a more than 20 percent decrease year-on-year, underscoring weakening sentiment and momentum amid lingering policy and financing headwinds. New Taipei City and Taoyuan bucked the downturn in project value, while Taipei, Hsinchu city and county, Taichung, Tainan and Kaohsiung
RSS