Property transactions in the six special municipalities totaled 18,365 units last month, a 1.5 percent fall from the same period last year, as buying interest picked up in southern Taiwan, but lost steam elsewhere, real-estate brokers said.
Housing deals gained 26 percent in Kaohsiung to 3,808 units, making it the only bright spot, attributable mainly to the completion of a presale residential complex and the inauguration of a pro-business mayor, the nation’s largest broker Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房屋) said.
Neighboring Tainan also posted a 6 percent pickup in housing deals to 2,001 last month from a year earlier, according to data from the local government.
Property trading held steady in Taichung with 3,222 units, and declined between 4 percent and 29 percent in Taoyuan, New Taipei City and Taipei, local governments’ data showed.
Taipei reported the sharpest retreat of 29 percent to 2,055 units, as holiday disruptions continued to weigh, Evertrust general manager Yeh Ling-chi (葉凌棋) said, adding that it takes about a month to process the transfer paperwork.
“The market saw a noticeable improvement in March, but the figures may be reflected in April’s data,” Yeh said.
The spring sales season — which spans the final week of last month and the whole of this month — should be busy, as developers and builders launched NT$222.5 billion (US$7.22 billion) of projects, a 6 percent advance from last year, the Chinese-language Housing Monthly (住展雜誌) said.
Real-estate companies may focus their marketing on this spring sales season and stay low-key for the rest of the year, as political uncertainty linked to the presidential election could sideline buyers until after the election in January next year, Yeh said.
In the first quarter, housing transactions rose 1 percent year-on-year to 49,934 units in the six special municipalities, backed almost single-handedly by Kaohsiung’s 16 percent increase, government statistics showed.
Taipei posted a 12 percent decline to 5,771 units in the first quarter, while Taoyuan suffered a 2 percent fall to 7,527 transactions.
Taichung had a flat showing with 9,283 deals and Tainan posted a 2 percent gain to 5,350 units, the government data showed.
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