Taiwan’s industrial property transactions grew 34.6 percent to a record high of NT$59.3 billion (US$2.11 billion) in the first half of this year, driven by strong demand for industrial plots of land, as well as factories and logistics facilities, CBRE Taiwan said yesterday.
The self-occupancy needs of technology and non-technology firms underpinned the robust showing that could extend into the second half of the year, despite a domestic COVID-19 outbreak, the broker said.
“Self-occupancy demand accounted for NT$42.7 billion of deals, a sharp increase of 69 percent from the same period last year, unaffected by the COVID-19 level 3 alert that is chilling consumer activity and slowing overall property transactions,” CBRE Taiwan research head Ping Lee (李嘉玶) said in a report.
Photo: Hsu Yi-ping, Taipei Times
Among the deals, MediaTek Inc (聯發科), the world’s biggest supplier of 5G smartphone chips, bought an office building in Taipei’s Neihu District (內湖) for its research-and-development department for NT$3.26 billion and Kinsus Interconnect Technology Corp (景碩科技), a silicon substrate maker, acquired a 44,000 ping (145,455m2) plot of land in Taoyuan for NT$4.48 billion to expand its capacity.
The trend also drew the attention of local constructions firms, who have poured money into the development of science parks, a further sign that this segment of the property market would continue to thrive, Lee said.
Costs for industrial plots of land nationwide average NT$137,000 per ping, a mild increase of 2.3 percent from last year, CBRE Taiwan said, adding that the increase is more than 4 percent for plots in central and southern Taiwan, while it is smaller than 1 percent in northern Taiwan.
Land prices have soared in northern Taiwan in recent years, but they remain relatively affordable at lower than NT$100,000 per ping elsewhere, Lee said.
The central bank has lowered the loan-to-value ratio for land deals to 55 percent to make hoarding land more expensive, Lee said, after companies seeking to shift production lines back to Taiwan from overseas complained about a shortage of land.
CBRE Taiwan real estate appraisal head Winston Shih (施甫學) said that office building upgrades and urban renewal projects would dominate land deals in northern Taiwan in light of a lack of supply.
Old factories in New Taipei City and Taoyuan would become the next hot spots, Shih said, predicting that solid demand would see the price of land in central and southern Taiwan increase by more than 5 percent.
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