Property transactions last month totaled 18,565 units in Taiwan’s six special municipalities, representing an increase of 8.6 percent from October, as builders wrapped up construction and turned over ownership to buyers ahead of the year’s end, brokers said.
However, the volume represents a 28.5 percent plunge from November last year, as interest rate hikes and economic uncertainty slowed purchase decisions.
Construction on presale housing projects in Taipei, Taoyuan, Taichung and Kaohsiung were completed and delivered, bolstering the number of deals to 1,999 units, 3,724 units, 4,286 units and 2,708 units respectively, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房屋) deputy research manager Chen Chin-ping (陳金萍) said.
Photo: Hsu Yi-ping, Taipei Times
Property transfers in New Taipei City reported a 10 percent rise to 4,238 units, and shrank 0.7 percent to 1,610 units in Tainan, Chen added.
Taiwanese developers often aim to complete projects by the year’s end to meet buyers’ needs and strengthen annual financial statements.
The housing market has not been spared from an economic slowdown in Taiwan and heightened fear of recession in the US and Europe, where central banks are raising interest rates to tame inflation despite job losses and economic downturns.
Transactions in the first 11 months of this year fell 7 percent from a year earlier, and the pace of retreat has been widening each month, Chen said.
The decline is set to persist in light of growing mortgage burdens, softening GDP growth and a negative wealth effect linked to TAIEX corrections, Chen said.
Taiwan’s central bank has hiked interest rates three times this year and is widely believed to make another increase later this month.
The decline is most evident in Kaohsiung and Tainan at 14.3 percent and 12.4 percent respectively, Great Home Realty Co (大家房屋) lead researcher Mandy Lang (郎美囡) said, but added that it is partly due to a high base last year.
The housing market in southern Taiwan enjoyed a two-year boom on the back of investment and expansion plans of local chipmakers and international equipment suppliers.
The property fever subsided after local tech firms cut and postponed capital spending due to order cancelations and sluggish end-market demand, Lang said.
H&B Business Group (住商不動產) research director Jessica Hsu (徐佳馨) said the lack of consensus over house prices have also dragged transactions.
Large developers have deep pockets and tend to hold firm on prices, as this strategy has paid off in the past, Hsu said.
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
Taiwan’s natural gas supply remains stable through the end of May, despite rising concerns about potential disruptions to Qatari liquefied natural gas (LNG) supplies due to escalating conflicts in the Middle East, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. The ministry in a statement said that Taiwan has completed preparations for natural gas supply and shipping schedules through the end of May. It has also made plans to increase natural gas imports from regions outside the Middle East in June to ensure a stable supply, it added. Taiwan sources natural gas from 14 countries and is not solely dependent on the Middle East,
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
RSS