Sales rates for presale and newly completed houses in northern Taiwan averaged 45.77 percent last year, an increase of 8 percentage points from 2017, as the market continues to improve, the Chinese-language Housing Monthly (住展雜誌) reported yesterday.
While the figures reflect an improved sentiment among developers and buyers, they also suggest increased pressure to move unsold houses, the magazine said.
“The sales rate stood at 45.77 percent, not far off from the 50 percent mark indicating a bull market,” the magazine’s research manager, Ho Shih-chang (何世昌) said.
The market is likely to have bottomed out in 2016 and staged a slow recovery since then, Ho said.
Developers and builders in 2016 sought to offer price concessions, as well as free furniture and decor, to stimulate sales, but have become increasingly inflexible, Ho said, adding that buyers might no longer have the upper hand once the sales rate climbs to 50 percent.
Hsinchu reported the highest sales rate of 59 percent last year, outperforming other cities in northern Taiwan, as a technology boom raised resident’s incomes, encouraging more housing transactions, Housing Monthly said.
Hsinchu is home to the Hsinchu Science Park (新竹科學園區) and the world’s largest critical component manufacturers.
Sales rates rose to 68 percent in East District (東區) and 64 percent in Siangshan District (香山區) where house prices are relatively affordable, it said, adding that sales rates were less than 50 percent in districts with prices of more than NT$300,000 (US$9,730.78) per ping (3.1m2).
Taipei reported sales of 6,033 presale and new housing units, raising its sales rate from 33 percent to 46 percent, the magazine said.
The sales rate surpassed 50 percent in the districts of Wanhua (萬華), Zhongzheng (中正) and Songshan (松山), but hovered at just more than 30 percent in Daan (大安) and Neihu (內湖), it said.
Affordability accounts for the difference, Ho said.
New Taipei City fared similarly with a sales rate of 46 percent, or 10,870 units, the report said.
Presale and new houses in the districts of Tucheng (土城), Sanxia (三峽) and Lujhou (蘆洲) proved more popular than in Tamsui (淡水), Rueifang (瑞芳) and Bali (八里), it said.
In addition to affordability, convenient locations play an important role, Ho said.
Keelung lagged behind other cities with a sales rate of 33 percent, weaker than in 2017, the report said.
Despite better sales rates, the pressure is building to move unsold houses as their number is increasing, limiting room for price hikes, Ho added.
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to