Housing transactions in the nation’s six special municipalities last month totaled 24,018 units, about the same as a year earlier, but down 13 percent from a month earlier, as COVID-19 measures and the Lunar New Year holiday dampened buying interest.
Potential buyers became more conservative as global monetary authorities signaled plans to raise interest rates later this year, which would add to property owners’ financial burden, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房屋) deputy head Chen Chin-ping (陳金萍) said.
The US Federal Reserve has made known its intent to raise interest rates starting next month, and Taiwan’s central bank would soon follow suit, Chen said.
Photo: CNA
The central bank in December introduced more credit controls on real-estate financing, and some board members pushed for rate hike discussions at the next policy meeting to help cool inflationary pressures and the property market.
The Ministry of the Interior has banned transfers of presale housing contracts and is providing financial rewards for tips that help crack down on property speculation, Chen said.
The series of unfavorable measures has sidelined prospective buyers, even though Taiwan’s economic fundamentals are better than expected, she said.
That explained why property transactions in Taipei last month shrank 5.2 percent from December to 2,720, while deals in New Taipei City dropped 10.6 percent to 6,202, Evertrust said, citing data from the respective local governments.
Compared with the previous month, housing sales in Taoyuan tumbled 13.6 percent to 4,346 and slumped 18.1 percent to 4,671 in Taichung, official data showed.
Transactions in Tainan decreased 6.1 percent to 2,235 and fell 19.9 percent to 3,844 in Kaohsiung.
Last month’s poor showings also had to do with the holiday season, as people were preoccupied with family reunions and celebrations, Sinyi Realty Inc (信義房屋) research manager Tseng Ching-der (曾進德) said.
Therefore, developers wrapped up construction and ownership transfers well before the holiday, elevating the comparison bar for December, Tseng said.
Housing prices last year increased to record highs in several areas outside Greater Taipei, and the trend would inevitably draw attention from policymakers, Tseng said.
The government is likely to tighten restrictions further later this year, he added.
Unaffordable housing prices would evolve into a social problem and policymakers would take steps to address the issue, he said.
Evertrust’s Chen agreed, suggesting that potential homebuyers be cautious and avoid overleveraging before joining the property market.
OpenAI has warned US lawmakers that its Chinese rival DeepSeek (深度求索) is using unfair and increasingly sophisticated methods to extract results from leading US artificial intelligence (AI) models to train the next generation of its breakthrough R1 chatbot, a memo reviewed by Bloomberg News showed. In the memo, sent on Thursday to the US House of Representatives Select Committee on China, OpenAI said that DeepSeek had used so-called distillation techniques as part of “ongoing efforts to free-ride on the capabilities developed by OpenAI and other US frontier labs.” The company said it had detected “new, obfuscated methods” designed to evade OpenAI’s defenses
NEW IMPORTS: Car dealer PG Union Corp said it would consider introducing US-made models such as the Jeep Grand Cherokee and Stellantis’ RAM 1500 to Taiwan Tesla Taiwan yesterday said that it does not plan to cut its car prices in the wake of Washington and Taipei signing the Agreement on Reciprocal Trade on Thursday to eliminate tariffs on US-made cars. On the other hand, Mercedes-Benz Taiwan said it is planning to lower the price of its five models imported from the US after the zero tariff comes into effect. Tesla in a statement said it has no plan to adjust the prices of the US-made Model 3, Model S and Model X as tariffs are not the only factor the automaker uses to determine pricing policies. Tesla said
China’s top chipmaker has warned that breakaway spending on artificial intelligence (AI) chips is bringing forward years of future demand, raising the risk that some data centers could sit idle. “Companies would love to build 10 years’ worth of data center capacity within one or two years,” Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯) cochief executive officer Zhao Haijun (趙海軍) said yesterday on a call with analysts. “As for what exactly these data centers will do, that hasn’t been fully thought through.” Moody’s Ratings projects that AI-related infrastructure investment would exceed US$3 trillion over the next five years, as developers pour eye-watering sums
Australian singer Kylie Minogue says “nothing compares” to performing live, but becoming an international wine magnate in under six years has been quite a thrill for the Spinning Around star. Minogue launched her first own-label wine in 2020 in partnership with celebrity drinks expert Paul Schaafsma, starting with a basic rose but quickly expanding to include sparkling, no-alcohol and premium rose offerings. The actress and singer has since wracked up sales of around 25 million bottles, with her carefully branded products pitched at low-to mid-range prices in dozens of countries. Britain, Australia and the United States are the biggest markets. “Nothing compares to performing
RSS