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.
Shares of contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) came under pressure yesterday after a report that Apple Inc is looking to shift some orders from the Taiwanese company to Intel Corp. TSMC shares fell NT$55, or 2.4 percent, to close at NT$2,235 on the local main board, Taiwan Stock Exchange data showed. Despite the losses, TSMC is expected to continue to benefit from sound fundamentals, as it maintains a lead over its peers in high-end process development, analysts said. “The selling was a knee-jerk reaction to an Intel-Apple report over the weekend,” Mega International Investment Services Corp (兆豐國際投顧) analyst Alex Huang
TRANSITION: With the closure, the company would reorganize its Taiwanese unit to a sales and service-focused model, Bridgestone said Bridgestone Corp yesterday announced it would cease manufacturing operations at its tire plant in Hsinchu County’s Hukou Township (湖口), affecting more than 500 workers. Bridgestone Taiwan Co (台灣普利司通) said in a statement that the decision was based on the Tokyo-based tire maker’s adjustments to its global operational strategy and long-term market development considerations. The Taiwanese unit would be reorganized as part of the closure, effective yesterday, and all related production activities would be concluded, the statement said. Under the plan, Bridgestone would continue to deepen its presence in the Taiwanese market, while transitioning to a sales and service-focused business model, it added. The Hsinchu
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has approved a capital budget of US$31.28 billion for production expansion to meet long-term development needs during the artificial intelligence (AI) boom. The company’s board meeting yesterday approved the capital appropriation plan for purposes such as the installation of advanced technology capacity and fab construction, the world’s largest contract chipmaker said in a statement. At an earnings conference last month, TSMC forecast that its capital expenditure for this year would be at the higher end of the US$52 billion to US$56 billion range it forecast in January in response to robust demand for 5G, AI and
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) investment project in Arizona has progressed better than expected, but it still faces challenges such as water and labor shortages, National Development Council (NDC) Minister Yeh Chun-hsien (葉俊顯) said yesterday. Speaking with reporters after visiting TSMC’s Arizona hub and attending the SelectUSA Investment Summit in Maryland last week, Yeh said TSMC’s Arizona site turned a profit of NT$16.14 billion (US$514 million) last year in its first full year of mass production. “TSMC told me it was surprised by the smooth trial run of the first fab, which has left the company optimistic about the project’s outlook,”
RSS