The number of unoccupied houses nationwide totaled 876,000 units last year, or 11.94 percent of all houses, the Ministry of the Interior said in a report issued on Thursday.
Almost 30 percent of empty houses were owned by companies, suggesting that many corporate property owners engage in house hoarding, the ministry said.
Excluding developers and builders, companies still owned 20 percent of empty houses, it said.
Photo: CNA
The report is based on housing units’ electricity use and considers properties that use less than 60 kilowatt-hours per month as unoccupied.
The study contradicts Ministry of Finance reports saying that house hoarding subsided and there is no need for housing tax increases.
To rein in property price increases due to house hoarding, the central bank in March capped the loan-to-value ratio at 40 percent for firms and 50 percent for individuals buying their fourth or more.
The interior ministry found that New Taipei City had the highest number of unoccupied houses at 152,000, followed by Kaohsiung with 117,000; Taichung with 105,000; Taoyuan with 102,000; Tainan with 78,000; and Taipei with 68,000.
The report said that 33.47 percent of corporate-owned empty houses were held by companies that owned more than 10 houses.
Individual owners of more than 10 houses held 18.74 percent of all empty houses, it said.
A domestic COVID-19 outbreak in May prompted the central bank to postpone planned measures to rein in house hoarding, even though property and construction lending continued to rise, defying expectations of a downturn.
Separately, Miaoli County-based tile producer Champion Building Materials Co (冠軍建材) yesterday said that it is seeking to reverse losses this year by expanding its domestic market share and booking income from the sale of a production facility in China.
Champion last year incurred losses of NT$403 million (US$14.41 million), or losses per share of NT$0.93, the company told its annual general meeting in Jhunan Township (竹南) on Tuesday, citing sharp competition from low-end producers.
However, the situation might improve this year, as Champion sold an idle production facility in Kunshan, China, amid rising real-estate prices in the emerging high-tech production hub, it said.
The transaction generated NT$1.08 billion in profit, it said.
Revenue contribution from Champion’s China business was 25 percent last year, while the rest came from the domestic market, the company said.
Taiwan’s rapidly aging population is fueling a sharp increase in homes occupied solely by elderly people, a trend that is reshaping the nation’s housing market and social fabric, real-estate brokers said yesterday. About 850,000 residences were occupied by elderly people in the first quarter, including 655,000 that housed only one resident, the Ministry of the Interior said. The figures have nearly doubled from a decade earlier, Great Home Realty Co (大家房屋) said, as people aged 65 and older now make up 20.8 percent of the population. “The so-called silver tsunami represents more than just a demographic shift — it could fundamentally redefine the
The US government on Wednesday sanctioned more than two dozen companies in China, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, including offshoots of a US chip firm, accusing the businesses of providing illicit support to Iran’s military or proxies. The US Department of Commerce included two subsidiaries of US-based chip distributor Arrow Electronics Inc (艾睿電子) on its so-called entity list published on the federal register for facilitating purchases by Iran’s proxies of US tech. Arrow spokesman John Hourigan said that the subsidiaries have been operating in full compliance with US export control regulations and his company is discussing with the US Bureau of
Businesses across the global semiconductor supply chain are bracing themselves for disruptions from an escalating trade war, after China imposed curbs on rare earth mineral exports and the US responded with additional tariffs and restrictions on software sales to the Asian nation. China’s restrictions, the most targeted move yet to limit supplies of rare earth materials, represent the first major attempt by Beijing to exercise long-arm jurisdiction over foreign companies to target the semiconductor industry, threatening to stall the chips powering the artificial intelligence (AI) boom. They prompted US President Donald Trump on Friday to announce that he would impose an additional
Pegatron Corp (和碩), a key assembler of Apple Inc’s iPhones, on Thursday reported a 12.3 percent year-on-year decline in revenue for last quarter to NT$257.86 billion (US$8.44 billion), but it expects revenue to improve in the second half on traditional holiday demand. The fourth quarter is usually the peak season for its communications products, a company official said on condition of anonymity. As Apple released its new iPhone 17 series early last month, sales in the communications segment rose sequentially last month, the official said. Shipments to Apple have been stable and in line with earlier expectations, they said. Pegatron shipped 2.4 million notebook
RSS