The climate monitor for the presale and new housing market in northern Taiwan last month held steady for a 15th straight month, but approached the brink of a slowdown amid tepid new project launches and buying interest, My Housing Monthly has found.
The reading came in at 42.2, dropping 3.9 points from one month earlier and coming close to the threshold of 42 that indicates a sluggish state, the Chinese-language research publication said in a report released on Thursday.
“The market has a slim chance of improving this month as political uncertainty linked to the elections of local administrators and councilors dominates public attention,” My Housing Monthly research manager Chen Tsai-chi (成采錡) said.
Photo: CNA
Presale housing projects last month totaled NT$50 billion (US$1.55 billion), but only a few met the NT$1.5 billion threshold to qualify as large project launches, Chen said.
In Taipei, only three projects — two in Beitou District (北投) and one in Nangang District (南港) — met the criteria.
In New Taipei City, five projects in Banciao (板橋), Sanchong (三重), Sindian (新店), Linkou (林口) and Taishan (泰山) districts passed the threshold, it said.
Three projects in Taoyuan and one in Hsinchu also qualified.
At the same time, the market saw the entry of 100 newly completed apartment units, with only one building in Taipei’s Zongshan District (中山) valued at more than NT$1.5 billion, it said.
The data showed that developers sought to cope with listless sales by slowing the supply rather than cutting prices to facilitate transactions, Chen said.
Sales rates fell from 7.04 to 5.63, with 1.6 deals closed per week, compared with 2.1 in September, it said.
The reading on price concessions stood at 8.89, the same as one month earlier, with the room for price bargaining averaging 10.41 percent for presale projects, it said.
Housing reception sites saw fewer potential buyers at about 21.9 people per week, compared with 23.8 people one month earlier, it said, adding that heavy rainfall last month contributed to cooling buying interest.
Asking prices played an important role in determining buying interest, Chen said, adding that Taipei’s unaffordable housing prices scared away many prospective buyers.
Some reception sites in the capital saw no visitors at all, but suburban districts Beitou and Neihu proved the exception because of their relatively friendly asking prices, he said.
Taiwanese firms have increased investment in the Philippines in recent years as Manila’s ties with Washington deepen and global supply chains continue to shift away from China, an expert at the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. The Philippines had not been among Taiwanese investors’ top choices in Southeast Asia, CIER Taiwan ASEAN Studies Center director Kristy Hsu (徐遵慈) said at a seminar in Taipei. However, Taiwan’s investment in the country has grown significantly since the COVID-19 pandemic, reaching US $257 million last year, a high in recent years, she said. Although Taiwan’s total investment in the Philippines still lags
Intel Corp regards Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) as a longstanding partner, as the US chipmaker would continue outsourcing production of advanced chips to TSMC, Intel chief executive officer Lip-Bu Tan (陳立武) said yesterday. “I don’t look at people as competitors. I look at the collaboration... Nvidia is also, you know, a good friend,” Tan told a news conference following his keynote speech at the Computex trade show in Taipei. “It’s a very trusted partnership for us... We are a big, top customer for them, and we’re going to continue doing that,” he said, referring to TSMC, the world’s largest foundry
Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday said it would work with US chipmaker Intel Corp to jointly develop and deploy next-generation artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure and intelligent computing platforms in a move to capture booming demand for AI computing systems. Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康), said in a statement that the partnership would combine its global manufacturing scale, system integration expertise and AI data center deployment capabilities with Intel’s strengths in processor architecture, silicon technologies and software ecosystem. The companies said they plan to work on equipment used in AI data centers, including server racks powered by
Artificial intelligence (AI) agents would supplant smartphones as the center of people’s digital lives, fundamentally reshaping personal devices and driving a major computing upgrade cycle, Qualcomm Inc CEO Cristiano Amon said yesterday. In his keynote speech for this year’s Computex trade show in Taipei, Amon said that the rise of "agentic AI" — AI systems capable of reasoning, planning and carrying out tasks autonomously — would transform how people interact with technology across phones, PCs, vehicles and wearable devices. Describing the technology as the next major evolution in computing, Amon said that "2026 is the year of agents.” For decades, smartphones have sat
RSS