The nation’s empty home rate was above 10 percent last year, but was still down slightly from a year earlier, according to data released on Friday by the Ministry of the Interior’s Construction and Planning Agency.
According to the data, the number of empty residential homes totaled 862,965 units, accounting for 10.22 percent of the total homes registered with the agency last year, down by 0.13 percentage points from a year earlier.
The agency calculated the number of empty homes based on two indicators: The number of new homes unsold by property developers and the number of homes in which the average monthly power consumption was below 60 kilowatts per hour.
Among the nation’s six largest cities, New Taipei City had the highest number of empty homes at 118,067 units, ahead of Kaohsiung (110,956 units), Taichung (96,132 units), Taoyuan (91,752 units), Tainan (66,941 units) and Taipei (60,682 units), the data showed.
The empty home ratio in New Taipei City, the nation’s most populous city, stood at 7.6 percent, while the ratio in Taipei, the most closely watched property market in the nation, was 6.82 percent, according to the data.
Kinmen County had the highest empty home ratio at 16.64 percent, followed by Yilan County (15.82 percent), Lienchiang County (15.50 percent), Yunlin County (14.38 percent), Chiayi County (14.16 percent) and Taitung County (14.14 percent), the agency said.
The agency said the empty home rate in Taiwan peaked in 2009 at 11.49 percent, before falling by 1.34 percentage points by 2011.
The figure in 2012 was up 0.48 percentage points, while year-on-year changes were limited to 0.2 percentage points in the following years, the agency said.
In related news, the central bank’s monthly data on mortgages showed a steady increase in lending last month from June, hitting record levels.
New housing loans, a gauge of the local property market, rose to a record level of NT$6.51 trillion (US$215 billion) last month, up NT$24.1 billion, or 0.37 percent, from the previous month.
Compared with the same period last year, housing loans grew 4.44 percent, the bank’s tallies showed.
Loans for construction, indicative of the construction sector’s attitude toward the market, also rose to a record NT$1.67 trillion last month, up 3.17 percent monthly and 3.08 percent annually, the data showed.
Meanwhile, housing mortgages with preferential interest rates for first-time homebuyers increased by NT$6.9 billion to NT$610.2 billion last month from a month earlier, the bank said.
According to the latest statistics, both lenders and construction companies remain cautiously positive about the development of the property market, the central bank said.
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