China’s runaway property market cooled slightly last month, as authorities rolled out further home-buying curbs to deflate a housing bubble.
New-home prices, excluding Chinese government-subsidized housing, gained last month in 62 of the 70 cities tracked by the government, compared with 63 in September, the Chinese National Bureau of Statistics said yesterday.
Prices dropped in seven cities, compared with six a month earlier. They were unchanged in one.
PROPERTY CURBS
Some local authorities have stepped up property curbs, following a raft of restrictions rolled out in almost two dozen cities since late September.
Eastern Hangzhou ruled more non-local buyers ineligible last week, two months after halting purchases for some non-local residents.
China’s banking regulator has told banks to review their mortgage lending and property development loans after China Minsheng Banking Corp (中國民生銀行) suspended approvals of some non-standard mortgages in Shanghai.
Home prices in first-tier and red-hot second-tier cities “apparently” stabilized in the second half of last month after those regions announced fine-tuned curbs, the statistics bureau said.
Five cities, from Beijing to Xiamen, snapped a streak of price gains, the bureau said.
New-home prices in Shenzhen, the nation’s hottest property market earlier this year, fell 0.5 percent from September, the first decline in two years, the data showed.
Prices in Beijing fell 0.4 percent in the second half of last month, and declined 0.1 percent in Shanghai.
HOUSING BUBBLE
“Buyers and developers are now taking to the sidelines, creating a standoff in the market,” said Xia Dan (夏丹), a Shanghai-based analyst at Bank of Communications Co (交通銀行).
A cooling of the property market might provide some relief to policymakers, who are seeking to avoid a housing bubble without denting economic growth. Even amid curbs in major cities, property development investment rose 13 percent from a year earlier last month, the most since at least last year, according to Bloomberg calculations based on official data released on Monday last week.
New housing starts, an early indicator of real-estate investment, gained 20 percent from a year earlier, the biggest increase since April.
The Chinese Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development has stepped up oversight of rogue players since early last month, investigating developers and agents for alleged false advertising, urging probes on “illegal” sales and cracking down on investment by online finance and peer-to-peer lenders.
WEAKER ACTIVITY: The sharpest deterioration was seen in the electronics and optical components sector, with the production index falling 13.2 points to 44.5 Taiwan’s manufacturing sector last month contracted for a second consecutive month, with the purchasing managers’ index (PMI) slipping to 48, reflecting ongoing caution over trade uncertainties, the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. The decline reflects growing caution among companies amid uncertainty surrounding US tariffs, semiconductor duties and automotive import levies, and it is also likely linked to fading front-loading activity, CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) said. “Some clients have started shifting orders to Southeast Asian countries where tariff regimes are already clear,” Lien told a news conference. Firms across the supply chain are also lowering stock levels to mitigate
IN THE AIR: While most companies said they were committed to North American operations, some added that production and costs would depend on the outcome of a US trade probe Leading local contract electronics makers Wistron Corp (緯創), Quanta Computer Inc (廣達), Inventec Corp (英業達) and Compal Electronics Inc (仁寶) are to maintain their North American expansion plans, despite Washington’s 20 percent tariff on Taiwanese goods. Wistron said it has long maintained a presence in the US, while distributing production across Taiwan, North America, Southeast Asia and Europe. The company is in talks with customers to align capacity with their site preferences, a company official told the Taipei Times by telephone on Friday. The company is still in talks with clients over who would bear the tariff costs, with the outcome pending further
Six Taiwanese companies, including contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), made the 2025 Fortune Global 500 list of the world’s largest firms by revenue. In a report published by New York-based Fortune magazine on Tuesday, Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), ranked highest among Taiwanese firms, placing 28th with revenue of US$213.69 billion. Up 60 spots from last year, TSMC rose to No. 126 with US$90.16 billion in revenue, followed by Quanta Computer Inc (廣達) at 348th, Pegatron Corp (和碩) at 461st, CPC Corp, Taiwan (台灣中油) at 494th and Wistron Corp (緯創) at
NEGOTIATIONS: Semiconductors play an outsized role in Taiwan’s industrial and economic development and are a major driver of the Taiwan-US trade imbalance With US President Donald Trump threatening to impose tariffs on semiconductors, Taiwan is expected to face a significant challenge, as information and communications technology (ICT) products account for more than 70 percent of its exports to the US, Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) said on Friday. Compared with other countries, semiconductors play a disproportionately large role in Taiwan’s industrial and economic development, Lien said. As the sixth-largest contributor to the US trade deficit, Taiwan recorded a US$73.9 billion trade surplus with the US last year — up from US$47.8 billion in 2023 — driven by strong
RSS