Real-estate brokers reported NT$14.1 billion (US$459.04 million) in revenue in the first four months of the year, up 13 percent from a year earlier, showing that the property market has come out of the woods, Sinyi Realty Inc (信義房屋) said in a report yesterday.
The results represented the sector’s best performance in four years, led by an evident recovery in southern Taiwan, the nation’s only listed broker said, citing Ministry of Finance data.
“The market appears to have emerged from sluggish transactions in the wake of property tax hikes introduced in 2016,” Sinyi research manager Tseng Ching-der (曾敬德) said.
Brokerage revenue totaled only NT$10 billion in the first four months of 2016, as prospective buyers stayed on the sidelines out of concern that property prices could fall.
The situation has stabilized based on revenue improvement during the same period last year and this year, Tseng said.
The revenue pickup was most noticeable in Tainan and Kaohsiung, both of which recorded a 34 percent increase from the same period last year, the report said.
The growth rate was 10 percent in New Taipei City and moderated to single digits in Taipei (8 percent), Taichung (7 percent) and Taoyuan (3 percent), it said.
By trading volume, Taipei generated almost 30 percent of the revenue at NT$4.11 billion, followed by New Taipei City with NT$2.33 billion and Taichung with NT$1.98 billion, it said.
Kaohsiung contributed NT$1.43 billion, Taoyuan generated NT$1.38 billion and Tainan accounted for NT$75 million, it added.
“The worst is definitely over if more evidence is required of a concrete recovery,” Tseng said, as other analysts stand by negative views, citing persistent price corrections.
Price hikes would remain evasive in the foreseeable future now that speculators have mostly fled the market, leaving people with real demand to underpin transactions, Tseng added.
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