Transactions of residential and commercial properties in Taipei and New Taipei City (新北市) for last month rose more than 15 percent from a month earlier, as the impact of the two-year luxury tax — designed to curb rising property prices — faded, according to statistics released yesterday.
Citing the statistics, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房屋), one of the nation’s leading property sales agencies, said transactions of shops, offices and homes in the two major cities in northern Taiwan grew 15.8 percent month-on-month last month, two years after the luxury tax was implemented.
Effective from June 2011, the luxury tax is aimed at curbing soaring property prices in the local market, in particular in northern Taiwan.
Under the tax scheme, a 15 percent tax was introduced on second homes not occupied by the owners and sold within one year of purchase. For such homes sold within two years of purchase, the sales tax was set at 10 percent.
Evertrust researcher Andy Huang (黃舒衛) said that a lot of sellers put their properties bought before the tax implementation up for sale because they were no longer subject to the tax levy.
On the back of an increased supply in the market, the total number of property sales in Taipei was 4,043 units last month, up 20 percent from June, while transactions in New Taipei rose 13.7 percent from a month earlier to 8,066 units, Huang said.
Huang said Taipei’s Neihu District (內湖) attracted many home buyers last month, when developers launched new residential property projects and supply of second-hand homes expanded in the area.
For New Taipei, booming new home sales in Sinjhuang (新莊), Zhonghe (中和), Sindian (新店) and Banciao (板橋) districts boosted the entire transactions in the city, Huang said.
Huang said that as the central bank is keeping interest rates low in a bid to boost the local economy, property transactions in Taipei and New Taipei are expected to stay stable in the second half of this year.
Meanwhile, local media cited statistics compiled by Sinyi Realty Inc (信義房屋), another property agency, as reporting that sales of residential and commercial properties for last month in Greater Taichung and Greater Tainan rose 17 percent and 12 percent respectively, from the previous month to hit 5,198 units and 2,163 units.
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