The presale and new housing market last quarter held steady from three months earlier by measure of projects for sale, showing a fractional 0.9 percent growth to NT$328 billion (US$11.13 billion), a Cathay Real Estate Development Co (國泰建設) survey showed on Wednesday.
Sales rates slowed somewhat, but selling prices rose nationwide as developers and builders passed rising construction costs on to buyers.
This segment of the property market continued to perform well, judging by housing prices, the survey showed.
Photo: Hsu Yi-ping, Taipei Times
Developers and builders launched 231 projects offering 20,559 units that could generate NT$328 billion in sales, representing a 13.5 percent increase compared with a year earlier, it said.
The increase in revenue came even though the number of projects and units declined 6.1 percent and 2 percent from their respective levels three months earlier, it said.
That meant the supply side refrained from active project launches, but raised prices to reflect spikes in labor and building material costs, it said.
Some developers pushed back their release schedules after government agencies introduced a spate of unfavorable measures to cool the market, it said.
The Ministry of the Interior is sponsoring a bill to impose stiff fines on dishonest marketing practices, and the central bank is suggesting further credit controls after hiking interest rates by 0.25 percentage points in March.
Potential transaction prices gained 13.66 percent to NT$432,500 per ping (3.3m2) nationwide, while leeway for price concessions was virtually flat at 7.71 percent, it said.
The 30-day sales rate was relatively stable at 15.2 percent, down 1.86 percentage points from the previously quarter, it said.
Price increases are most evident in Hsinchu County at 19.2 percent, followed by Taoyuan at 18.45 percent, and Kaohsiung at 16.37 percent, it said.
Prices for presale housing projects in Taichung and Tainan both rose 11 percent, while advancing 8.6 percent in Taipei and 8.52 percent in New Taipei City.
Average selling prices in Taipei reached NT$1.06 million per ping, a mark previously limited to popular locations, it said, adding that uncertainty is gathering pace this quarter due to heightening economic downside risks.
STRONG INTEREST: Analysts have pointed to optimism in TSMC’s growth prospects in the artificial intelligence era as the cause of the rising number of shareholders The number of people holding shares of chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) hit a new high last week despite a decline in its stock price, the Taiwan Depository and Clearing Corp (TDCC, 台灣集保) said. The number of TSMC shareholders rose to 2.46 million as of Friday, up 75,536 from a week earlier, TDCC data showed. The stock price fell 1.34 percent during the same week to close at NT$1,840 (US$57.55). The decline in TSMC’s share price resulted from volatility in global tech stocks, driven by rising international crude oil prices as the war against Iran continues. Dealers said
PRICE HIKES: The war in the Middle East would not significantly disrupt supply in the short term, but semiconductor companies are facing price surges for materials Taiwan’s semiconductor companies are not facing imminent supply disruptions of essential chemicals or raw materials due to the war in the Middle East, but surges in material costs loom large, industry association SEMI Taiwan said yesterday. The association’s comments came amid growing concerns that supplies of helium and other key raw materials used in semiconductor production could become a choke point after Qatar shut down its liquefied natural gas (LNG) production and helium output earlier this month due to the conflict. Qatar is the second-largest LNG supplier in the world and accounts for about 33 percent of global helium output. Helium is
China is clamping down on fertilizer exports to protect its domestic market, industry sources said, putting an additional strain on global markets that were already grappling with shortages caused by the US-Israeli war on Iran. China is among the largest fertilizer exporters — shipping more than US$13 billion of it last year — and it has a history of controlling exports to keep prices low for farmers. Shipments through the war-blocked Strait of Hormuz account for about one-third of the sea-borne supply. This month, Beijing banned exports of nitrogen-potassium fertilizer blends and certain phosphate varieties, sources said. The ban, which has not
AMAZING ABUNDANCE: Elon Musk has announced plans for a new facility in Texas which would manufacture chips for Tesla and SpaceX to use in robotics and AI Elon Musk said his Terafab project — a grand plan to eventually manufacture his own chips for robotics, artificial intelligence (AI) and space data centers — would be built in Austin and jointly run by Tesla Inc and Space Exploration Technologies Corp (SpaceX). Musk, the chief executive officer of the two companies, said he would start off with an “advanced technology fab” in Austin that would have all of the equipment necessary to make chips of any kind. The project would call for one day supporting 1 terawatt (TW) of computing power per year, the amount Musk expects the companies to
RSS