Property transactions could hold steady amid modest price declines next year as more presale projects and completed houses are due to enter the market, adding to selling pressures, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房屋) said yesterday.
Property transactions are likely to total 270,000 units this year, a 10 percent increase from last year, but lower than the broker’s previous estimate of 275,000 units as growth momentum slackens this quarter due to a high base, Evertrust general manager Yeh Ling-chi (葉凌棋) told a news conference in Taipei.
Price concessions remain the key to property transactions, which could take a downturn if sellers refuse to concede, Yeh said.
“The large volume of presale and unsold houses make price increases unlikely, if not totally impossible, despite improving sentiment,” Yeh said.
Evertrust, the nation’s largest broker by number of offices, arrived at the conclusion after a quarterly poll showed 64 percent of people believe property prices have yet to bottom out.
The market is likely to stage an L-shape recovery and has not come out of the trough yet, Evertrust spokesman Jay Hsieh (謝志傑) said.
Presale and unsold houses of up to five years old are likely to amount to 121,000 units nationwide next year, suggesting heavy selling pressure ahead, Yeh said.
The pressure is heaviest in New Taipei City with 23,000 units on the market, followed by Taoyuan with 20,093 units and Kaohsiung with 18,697 units, Yeh said, citing government figures.
Developers and builders are likely to give top priority to digesting inventory or a supply glut would hurt prices for presale projects, Yeh said.
Developers have lowered the prices of presale units in areas near MRT Jiangzicui Station (江子翠) in New Taipei City and the strategy has proved successful, Yeh said.
The central bank might keep interest rates unchanged next year to support the economy as its peers in the US and elsewhere move to normalize monetary policy, he said, adding that widening interest rate spreads might prompt monetary policymakers to contemplate tightening measures.
Low borrowing costs would continue to lend support to the property market next year with a slim chance of any surprises, Yeh said, as the central bank could end its loose monetary policy in the second half of next year or in 2019.
Interest rate increases would raise cost burdens, making it more difficult for investors to cash out, he said.
Napoleon Osorio is proud of being the first taxi driver to have accepted payment in bitcoin in the first country in the world to make the cryptocurrency legal tender: El Salvador. He credits Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s decision to bank on bitcoin three years ago with changing his life. “Before I was unemployed... And now I have my own business,” said the 39-year-old businessman, who uses an app to charge for rides in bitcoin and now runs his own car rental company. Three years ago the leader of the Central American nation took a huge gamble when he put bitcoin
Demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips should spur growth for the semiconductor industry over the next few years, the CEO of a major supplier to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) said, dismissing concerns that investors had misjudged the pace and extent of spending on AI. While the global chip market has grown about 8 percent annually over the past 20 years, AI semiconductors should grow at a much higher rate going forward, Scientech Corp (辛耘) chief executive officer Hsu Ming-chi (許明琪) told Bloomberg Television. “This booming of the AI industry has just begun,” Hsu said. “For the most prominent
Former Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) chairman Mark Liu (劉德音) yesterday warned against the tendency to label stakeholders as either “pro-China” or “pro-US,” calling such rigid thinking a “trap” that could impede policy discussions. Liu, an adviser to the Cabinet’s Economic Development Committee, made the comments in his keynote speech at the committee’s first advisers’ meeting. Speaking in front of Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰), National Development Council (NDC) Minister Paul Liu (劉鏡清) and other officials, Liu urged the public to be wary of falling into the “trap” of categorizing people involved in discussions into either the “pro-China” or “pro-US” camp. Liu,
PARTNERSHIPS: TSMC said it has been working with multiple memorychip makers for more than two years to provide a full spectrum of solutions to address AI demand Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said it has been collaborating with multiple memorychip makers in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) used in artificial intelligence (AI) applications for more than two years, refuting South Korean media report's about an unprecedented partnership with Samsung Electronics Co. As Samsung is competing with TSMC for a bigger foundry business, any cooperation between the two technology heavyweights would catch the eyes of investors and experts in the semiconductor industry. “We have been working with memory partners, including Micron, Samsung Memory and SK Hynix, on HBM solutions for more than two years, aiming to advance 3D integrated circuit
RSS