The local property market flashed “blue” last month, pointing to contraction, with an index gauging the state of the market falling from the previous month, according to a survey conducted by the Chinese-language Housing Monthly (住展雜誌) magazine.
The housing index last month dropped 0.4 percentage points from a month earlier to 30.2, indicating that the local property market contracted, as the score remained under 32 points.
The listing of newly completed homes and the amount of property advertisement, two of the six factors in the index, moved lower, the magazine said.
It was the second consecutive month that the local property market has contracted, it said.
“Red” indicates overheating, “yellow-red” rapid growth, “green” means steady growth, “yellow-blue” sluggishness and “blue” contraction.
Of the six factors that make up the index, the sub-index for the listing of newly completed residential housing fell from 4.44 in December last year to 3.04 last month, while the sub-index for the amount of property advertising fell from 4.79 to 4.18, a market survey showed.
The sub-index for price negotiations and the number of viewings by potential buyers remained unchanged at 4.78 and 5.76 respectively, it found.
Bucking the downturn in the overall index, the sub-index for the listing of pre-sale residential housing and home transactions rose from 6.17 and 4.69 in the previous month to 7.26 and 5.16 respectively, according to the survey.
The sub-index for home transactions was higher than expected, indicating that the slow season effects in the month did not have too much effect on the local property market, Housing Monthly research manager Ho Shih-chang (何世昌) said.
The decline in the supply of newly completed residential housing reflects the mentality of most property developers who are waiting until the end of the six-day Lunar New Year holiday, which ends today, when potential buyers return to the market, he said.
The decline in property advertising also resulted from a similar mentality among property developers, Ho added.
While the number of viewings by potential buyers remained unchanged from the previous month, it rose about 30 percent from a year earlier, Ho said, and that more potential buyers are willing to survey the market bodes well for transactions, he said.
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
Clambering hand-over-hand, sweat dripping into his eyes, a durian laborer expertly slices a cumbersome fruit from a tree before tossing it down to land with a soft thump in his colleague’s waiting arms about 15m below. Among Thailand’s most famous and lucrative exports, the pungent “king of fruits” is as distinctive in its smell as its spiky green-brown carapace, and has been farmed in the kingdom for hundreds of years. However, a vicious heat wave engulfing Southeast Asia has resulted in smaller yields and spiraling costs, with growers and sellers increasingly panicked as global warming damages the industry. “This year is a crisis,”
HIGH-TECH: As leading-edge process technologies become more complicated, only a handful of players are able to provide design services, the company’s CEO said Artificial intelligence (AI) chip designer Alchip Technologies Ltd (世芯) yesterday said that revenue would grow significantly again in 2026 after adding a major AI chip customer, reversing moderation amid a product transition next year. The Taipei-based application-specific IC (ASIC) designer reiterated its strong revenue growth forecast for this year and 2026 after its stock plummeted about 23 percent to NT$3,145 from a peak of NT$4,085 on March 6 amid growing competition. Alchip said it has built strong partnerships with cloud service providers (CSP), denying that it had lost orders to smaller competitors such as Faraday Technology Corp (智原). Faraday said it has secured