Continental Development Corp (大陸建設) seeks to sell NT$40 billion (US$1.3 billion) of new housing projects this year, similar to last year’s volume, as the market is expected to remain soft amid a slow recovery, top-ranking officials said on Tuesday evening.
The projects are all located in popular Taipei, Taichung and Kaohsiung districts, as the firm does not have confidence to foray into less central areas, the developer said.
“The market likely hit the bottom last year, but it needs a long time to come back,” Continental Development chairman Christopher Chang (張良吉) told a media briefing.
The Taipei-based developer said that luxury housing tax respites announced by the Taipei City Government helped boost buyers’ interest, but are inadequate to facilitate transactions.
Most prospective buyers would stay on the sidelines because holding costs are expected to return to unreasonable levels after the luxury tax respite ends, Chang said.
He called on the city government to abolish its luxury housing taxes to unfreeze the market.
The company has sold 70 percent of an expensive apartment project in Taichung and expects deals for an upscale presale residential project in Taipei’s Xinyi District (信義) to hit a double-digit percentage.
“We are not in a hurry to close either project, as it takes some time to digest luxury housing,” Chang said.
Continental plans to launch sales for its serviced apartments in Taipei’s Zhongshan District (中山) in the second or third quarter of this year, he said.
The presale project will have 24 stories above ground and six basement floors on the intersection of Songjiang and Nanjing E roads, company president Liao Tsung-sen (廖淳森) said.
With 8,000 ping (26,446m2) of floor space, the mixed-use building is to house a boutique hotel on the first to ninth floors and feature 127 residential apartments of 25 ping to 45 ping from the 10th to the 24th floors, Liao said.
My Humble House Hospitality Management Consulting Co (寒舍餐旅) has inked an agreement to run the hotel, likely under its own brand, he said.
The developer aims to set prices for the apartments at less than NT$70 million per unit, short of the average NT$80 million price tag for luxury housing, Chang said.
Continental is also seeking land in Taichung and Kaohsiung, but is shying away from urban renewal projects on concerns that they are time-consuming, Chang added.
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