Major property brokers reported a noticeable pickup in housing transactions last month as buyers regained some confidence after local governments stopped unfavorable rhetoric against the market.
However, prospective buyers have mostly adopted a wait-and-see attitude, making the recovery slow and fragile, if not premature, they said.
Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房屋), the nation’s largest real-estate broker by number of offices, said it saw buying interest last month grow 20 percent from January, while transactions held relatively steady, despite holiday disruptions.
There was a 19 percent annual increase in transactions over the past two months, suggesting the market might have hit the bottom and has begun to climb, Evertrust research manager Jay Hsieh (謝志傑) said.
Increased transactions were evident in Taipei, New Taipei City and Taoyuan, where housing prices fell more than 10 percent from their peaks in 2014, a more acceptable level for buyers, he said.
A trial run of the Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport Mass Rapid Transit line has shortened the commute time between Taipei and Taoyuan, boosting buying interest along the rail network, Hsieh said.
However, insignificant price corrections continued to constrain transactions in central and southern Taiwan, Hsieh said.
Sinyi Realty Inc (信義房屋), the nation’s only listed real-estate broker, arrived at similar conclusions, saying that housing deals picked up 27 percent in the past two months from a year earlier.
Transactions in Taipei and Taoyuan rose 32.8 percent and 37.4 percent respectively on the back of pent-up demand, Sinyi research manager Tseng Ching-der (曾進德) said.
“Buyers scared away by unfavorable policies have started to return to the market now that governments on different levels appear satisfied with the success of cooling measures,” Tseng said.
The change in attitude should gradually and steadily lift market confidence from a trough last year, during which housing transactions slumped to a record low, Tseng said.
Sinyi Realty’s development arm recently acquired two plots of land totaling 920 ping (3,041m2) in New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋) for NT$1.07 billion (US$34.91 million), on which it plans to build a residential apartment complex.
The land acquisition showed the firm’s optimism about the property market, despite a protracted soft patch, the company said in a statement.
Taiwan Realty Co (台灣房屋), another major broker, reported a steep increase in property transactions nationwide last month, led by Taoyuan.
Apartments at least 15 years old and priced between NT$11 million and NT$13 million were particularly popular among buyers with self-occupancy needs, Taiwan Realty said.
Buying interest for storefronts along the airport metro line intensified over the past two months, it added.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by