Presale and new-home prices dropped modestly in northern Taiwan last quarter from the previous quarter as some developers and builders offered greater concessions to facilitate transactions, Housing Monthly said yesterday.
However, it would be premature to speculate over a recovery, due to low visibility, even though buying interest picked up noticeably this month, the Chinese-language magazine said.
New Taipei City and Taoyuan reported the biggest price declines of 2.17 percent and 2.09 percent to NT$406,000 (US$12,571) per ping and NT$239,000 per ping respectively, as companies demonstrated greater pricing flexibility to digest inventory, the magazine’s research manager Ho Shih-chang (何世昌) said by telephone.
“The move made sense in light of heavy supply in the two municipalities and a continued sluggish market,” Ho said.
Still, most companies stood by their pricing policies supported by their deep pockets, which explains why overall transactions fell 20 percent during the January-to-March period from a year earlier, he said.
The standoff might persist going forward as building companies find encouragement from the central bank’s removal of credit controls and interest-rate cuts, Ho said.
Presale and new-home prices declined by 0.69 percent to NT$860,000 per ping on average in Taipei last quarter, easing from a 1.4 percent drop three months earlier, the magazine said.
The central bank’s stance and limited new supply saw developers and builders breathe a sigh of relief, Ho said.
“Many industry watchers have said that the worst is over, although a recovery remains elusive,” Ho said.
New-home prices in Yilan held steady last quarter at NT$221,000 per ping as local residents and buyers from Taipei supplied stable demand, Ho said.
Geographic closeness to beaches and mountains make Yilan a popular location for second homes or vacation homes after the Hsuehshan Tunnel significantly shortened travel time between Yilan and Taipei, he said.
Domestic lodging facility providers My Humble House Hospitality Management Consulting Co (寒舍餐旅), Farglory Hotel Co (遠雄悅來大飯店), and Maison de Chine (兆品酒店) are soon to start operations in Yilan, with peers including Formosa International Hotels Corp (晶華酒店), Hotel Royal Group (老爺大酒店集團) and Evergreen International Hotels (長榮國際) having thrived there for years.
Keelung bucked the trend and saw a 1.46 percent pickup to NT$208,000 per ping in new-home prices last quarter, attributable to a successful pricing strategy by a major apartment complex, Ho said.
The room for price hikes in Keelung is limited due to a lack of new infrastructure, Ho said.
The US dollar was trading at NT$29.7 at 10am today on the Taipei Foreign Exchange, as the New Taiwan dollar gained NT$1.364 from the previous close last week. The NT dollar continued to rise today, after surging 3.07 percent on Friday. After opening at NT$30.91, the NT dollar gained more than NT$1 in just 15 minutes, briefly passing the NT$30 mark. Before the US Department of the Treasury's semi-annual currency report came out, expectations that the NT dollar would keep rising were already building. The NT dollar on Friday closed at NT$31.064, up by NT$0.953 — a 3.07 percent single-day gain. Today,
‘SHORT TERM’: The local currency would likely remain strong in the near term, driven by anticipated US trade pressure, capital inflows and expectations of a US Fed rate cut The US dollar is expected to fall below NT$30 in the near term, as traders anticipate increased pressure from Washington for Taiwan to allow the New Taiwan dollar to appreciate, Cathay United Bank (國泰世華銀行) chief economist Lin Chi-chao (林啟超) said. Following a sharp drop in the greenback against the NT dollar on Friday, Lin told the Central News Agency that the local currency is likely to remain strong in the short term, driven in part by market psychology surrounding anticipated US policy pressure. On Friday, the US dollar fell NT$0.953, or 3.07 percent, closing at NT$31.064 — its lowest level since Jan.
Hong Kong authorities ramped up sales of the local dollar as the greenback’s slide threatened the foreign-exchange peg. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) sold a record HK$60.5 billion (US$7.8 billion) of the city’s currency, according to an alert sent on its Bloomberg page yesterday in Asia, after it tested the upper end of its trading band. That added to the HK$56.1 billion of sales versus the greenback since Friday. The rapid intervention signals efforts from the city’s authorities to limit the local currency’s moves within its HK$7.75 to HK$7.85 per US dollar trading band. Heavy sales of the local dollar by
The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) yesterday met with some of the nation’s largest insurance companies as a skyrocketing New Taiwan dollar piles pressure on their hundreds of billions of dollars in US bond investments. The commission has asked some life insurance firms, among the biggest Asian holders of US debt, to discuss how the rapidly strengthening NT dollar has impacted their operations, people familiar with the matter said. The meeting took place as the NT dollar jumped as much as 5 percent yesterday, its biggest intraday gain in more than three decades. The local currency surged as exporters rushed to
RSS