Taipei’s high rental rates is a key factor hampering entrepreneurship in the city, Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) said yesterday during his biweekly lunchbox talk with city government officials broadcast live on social media.
“High rents are a major obstacle for young people,” Ko said, adding that many young people prefer buying cheaper homes in the suburbs and spend more time commuting.
Rental rates for shops in the city’s popular business districts are too high, and most of their earnings are spent on rent, he said.
High housing prices is a long-term problem that cannot be solved immediately, he added.
While the city government has boosted its efforts to build public housing and about 12,000 units would be under construction by the end of this year, it will take many years for the number of public housing to reach about 5 percent of the total number of homes in the city to have any effect on housing prices, Ko said.
Another problem is that more than 600,000 apartments have remained vacant for more than one year, Ko said.
The government should motivate homeowners to rent out their properties, for example by changing the tax rate, he said, but added that subletting and an entrusted management system has not been successful so far, and that the city government is seeking advice from experts.
“If I am re-elected, I think the city’s zoning regulations for land use must be modified, as they are unpractical,” he said. “Also we have to face the problem of why there are so many vacant homes and solve these problems one by one.
Taipei City Government Deputy Secretary-General Li Te-chuan Li Te-chuan (李得全), who heads the Department of Land, also attended the 30-minute talk.
Li said there are four main factors causing chaos in the real-estate market: insufficient market transparency, frequent transaction disputes, unreasonable tax rates and fluctuating market prices.
The real-estate transaction price registration and query system has improved transparency, and property owners can use the government’s real-time land registration information query system to avoid real-estate scams, he said.
“The carrying cost of owning a car worth NT$2 million [US$65,153] is higher than that of owning a house worth NT$20 million,” Li said, adding that the carrying cost of real estate in Taiwan is low compared with other nations, so many people think that the real-estate market as profitable.
Taipei’s house price-to-income ratio rose from about six in 2002 to about 16 this year, which means the cost of an average apartment unit is equal to about 16 years of income, he said, adding that it is about 33 years for newly built units.
Li said the 11 city departments are working to improve the real-estate market, with a focus on three main tasks: information transparency, transaction safety and reasonable tax rates.
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