Female buyers of houses slightly outnumbered male buyers in Taiwan last year for the seventh consecutive year, according to statistics released by a real-estate agency yesterday.
Fifty-one percent of home buyers in Taiwan last year were women, the figures showed, and 82.3 percent of all homes were purchased by people aged between 30 and 59.
Women were most likely to buy homes in their 40s, with women of that age group accounting for 16.2 percent of all home purchases last year. Women in their 30s and 50s accounted for 13.9 percent and 12.2 percent of home purchases respectively, the figures showed.
Men were most likely to buy homes in their 30s, accounting for 16.3 percent of all home sales. Another 13.9 percent of homes were bought by men in their 40s, and 9.9 percent were bought by men in their 50s.
As more women have become financially independent, they have shown increasing interest in the real-estate market and some couples buy a new house under the wife’s name, real-estate broker H&B Housing analyst Hsu Chia-hsin (徐佳馨) said.
Many men buy houses when they get married, explaining why the 30-to-39 age bracket is the most popular age for men to buy property.
However, many female buyers are single and are better able to afford a house after turning 40, she said.
As for their consumption patterns, women tend to prefer regular apartments and are normally risk averse, Hsu said, with some properties even being customized to women’s needs in recent years.
Men tend to take bigger risks and buy anything from a house to a piece of land or a parking spot, she said.
Starlux Airlines, Taiwan’s newest international carrier, has announced it would apply to join the Oneworld global airline alliance before the end of next year. In an investor conference on Monday, Starlux Airlines chief executive officer Glenn Chai (翟健華) said joining the alliance would help it access Taiwan. Chai said that if accepted, Starlux would work with other airlines in the alliance on flight schedules, passenger transits and frequent flyer programs. The Oneworld alliance has 13 members, including American Airlines, British Airways, Cathay Pacific and Qantas, and serves more than 900 destinations in 170 territories. Joining Oneworld would also help boost
A new tropical storm formed late yesterday near Guam and is to approach closest to Taiwan on Thursday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. Tropical Storm Pulasan became the 14th named storm of the year at 9:25pm yesterday, the agency said. As of 8am today, it was near Guam traveling northwest at 21kph, it said. The storm’s structure is relatively loose and conditions for strengthening are limited, WeatherRisk analyst Wu Sheng-yu (吳聖宇) said on Facebook. Its path is likely to be similar to Typhoon Bebinca, which passed north of Taiwan over Japan’s Ryukyu Islands and made landfall in Shanghai this morning, he said. However, it
Taiwan's Gold Apollo Co (金阿波羅通信) said today that the pagers used in detonations in Lebanon the day before were not made by it, but by a company called BAC which has a license to use its brand. At least nine people were killed and nearly 3,000 wounded when pagers used by Hezbollah members detonated simultaneously across Lebanon yesterday. Images of destroyed pagers analyzed by Reuters showed a format and stickers on the back that were consistent with pagers made by Gold Apollo. A senior Lebanese security source told Reuters that Hezbollah had ordered 5,000 pagers from Taiwan-based Gold Apollo. "The product was not
COLD FACTS: ‘Snow skin’ mooncakes, made with a glutinous rice skin and kept at a low temperature, have relatively few calories compared with other mooncakes Traditional mooncakes are a typical treat for many Taiwanese in the lead-up to the Mid-Autumn Festival, but a Taipei-based dietitian has urged people not to eat more than one per day and not to have them every day due to their high fat and calorie content. As mooncakes contain a lot of oil and sugar, they can have negative health effects on older people and those with diabetes, said Lai Yu-han (賴俞含), a dietitian at Taipei Hospital of the Ministry of Health and Welfare. “The maximum you can have is one mooncake a day, and do not eat them every day,” Lai