Taipei’s top luxury home projects are about to sell out following years of inventory corrections and price concessions, a report by the Chinese-language Housing Monthly (住展雜誌) said yesterday.
The magazine defines extravagant homes as those valued at NT$2 million (US$65,563) per ping (3.3m2) and up.
“The luxury home market is running out of stock as years of price concessions and inventory adjustments pay off,” Ho Shih-chang (何世昌), the magazine’s research manager said, in the report.
Peace Palace (和平大苑), an urban renewal project between Yuanlih Construction Enterprise Group (元利建設) and private owners, that launched in 2016 is 70 percent sold, Ho said.
The high-rise at the intersection of Heping E Road and Jingshan S Road gained attention when singer-songwriter Jay Chou (周杰倫) bought the top two floors for NT$2.25 million per ping, Ho said, citing the government real-price transaction data.
The newly completed 55 Timeless Tower (琢白) by Continental Development Corp (CDC, 大陸建設) in the Xinyi District (信義) is more than 60 percent sold, the report said.
The tower is popular with buyers in their 40s and 50s, due to its simple and elegant design by award-winning US architect Richard Meier, the report said.
The building features 43 units of 140 ping and 260 ping, and is relatively affordable, compared with similar nearby properties after CDC cut prices, the report said.
The Sherwood Residence (西華富邦), a 198-unit serviced apartment building in the Dazhi area (大直) with upper floors that overlook the Keelung River and Taipei International Airport (Songshan airport), has about 40 larger units available, while the smaller 108-ping units are all sold, the report said.
Huaku Development Co (華固建設) recently sold all 25 units in an upscale building on Dunhua N Road, which boosted its revenue more than fourfold in the first 10 months of this year from a year earlier and sent its share prices up this month, the report said.
Sale rates hovered around 70 percent at Huaku Development project in the Tianmu area (天母), it said.
The slow, but gradual recovery in the luxury home market has led developers to be less flexible on pricing, Ho said.
HORMUZ ISSUE: The US president said he expected crude prices to drop at the end of the war, which he called a ‘minor excursion’ that could continue ‘for a little while’ The United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Kuwait started reducing oil production, as the near-closure of the crucial Strait of Hormuz ripples through energy markets and affects global supply. Abu Dhabi National Oil Co (ADNOC) is “managing offshore production levels to address storage requirements,” the company said in a statement, without giving details. Kuwait Petroleum Corp said it was lowering production at its oil fields and refineries after “Iranian threats against safe passage of ships through the Strait of Hormuz.” The war in the Middle East has all but closed Hormuz, the narrow waterway linking the Persian Gulf to the open seas,
RATIONING: The proposal would give the Trump administration ample leverage to negotiate investments in the US as it decides how many chips to give each country US officials are debating a new regulatory framework for exporting artificial intelligence (AI) chips and are considering requiring foreign nations to invest in US AI data centers or security guarantees as a condition for granting exports of 200,000 chips or more, according to a document seen by Reuters. The rules are not yet final and could change. They would be the first attempt to regulate the flow of AI chips to US allies and partners since US President Donald Trump’s administration said it rescinded its predecessor’s so-called AI diffusion rules. Those rules sought to keep a significant amount of AI
Apple Inc increased iPhone production in India by about 53 percent last year and now makes a quarter of its marquee devices there, reflecting the US company’s efforts to avoid tariffs on China. The company assembled about 55 million iPhones in India last year, up from 36 million a year earlier, people familiar with the matter said, asking not to be named because the numbers aren’t public. Apple makes about 220 million to 230 million iPhones a year globally, with India’s share of the total increasing rapidly. Apple has accelerated its expansion in the world’s most populous country in recent years, bolstered
HEADWINDS: The company said it expects its computer business, as well as consumer electronics and communications segments to see revenue declines due to seasonality Pegatron Corp (和碩) yesterday said it aims to grow its artificial intelligence (AI) server revenue more than 10-fold this year from last year, driven by orders from neocloud solutions clients and large cloud service providers. The electronics manufacturing service provider said AI server revenue growth would be driven primarily by the Nvidia Corp GB300 server platform. Server shipments are expected to increase each quarter this year, with the second half likely to outperform the first half, it said. The AI server market is expected to broaden this year as more inference applications emerge, which would drive demand for system-on-chip, application-specific integrated circuits