Changes to the Equalization of Land Rights Act (平均地權條例) might trigger panic selling of presale house purchase agreements and weigh on overall property deals, real-estate analysts said yesterday.
The amendments, which cleared the legislature yesterday morning, would ban transfers of presale house purchase agreements and require legal entities to obtain permission from their respective governing authority before buying a residential unit.
Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房屋) said the legislation in essence limits presale housing projects to buyers with real demand and puts an end to people profiting from reselling purchase agreements that cost relatively little.
Photo: CNA
“The revisions aim to stem short-term property speculation for presale and existing housing, which would help make house prices in Taiwan more reasonable,” Evertrust Rehouse deputy research head Chen Chin-ping (陳金萍) said, adding that unaffordable housing has ranked the No. 1 public complaint over past few years, especially among young people.
Investment-minded holders of presale house contracts would opt out and take a loss if necessary, as some would not have the financial means to absorb the mortgage burdens, Evertrust Rehouse said.
The legislation should succeed in calming house price increase expectations and prevent a bubble from forming, the broker said.
Sinyi Realty Inc (信義房屋) said the requirement that legal entities gain approval before buying real estate would slow luxury house transactions and dampen capital repatriation.
Some people have channeled money from abroad to buy luxury houses in Taiwan to dodge stiff income taxes abroad, while others have used upscale housing to protect themselves from inflation, Sinyi said.
The amendments could discourage such practices, which noticeably cooled last year due to interest rate hikes, unfavorable tax terms and other headwinds, Sinyi said.
H&B Realty Co (住商不動產) said that the slowdown in the local housing market has to do with the amendments being proposed in July last year.
Investors have since fled the market, although they were hoping the government might back off, H&B research manager Jessica Hsu (徐佳馨) said.
“Panic selling looks inevitable and might cause a splash,” Hsu said.
However, it is too early to tell if there would be evident housing price corrections, she said.
Rather, the requirement to gain permission might discourage urban renewal projects, Hsu added.
SEE LAWMAKERS ON PAGE 1
Intel Corp chief executive officer Lip-Bu Tan (陳立武) is expected to meet with Taiwanese suppliers next month in conjunction with the opening of the Computex Taipei trade show, supply chain sources said on Monday. The visit, the first for Tan to Taiwan since assuming his new post last month, would be aimed at enhancing Intel’s ties with suppliers in Taiwan as he attempts to help turn around the struggling US chipmaker, the sources said. Tan is to hold a banquet to celebrate Intel’s 40-year presence in Taiwan before Computex opens on May 20 and invite dozens of Taiwanese suppliers to exchange views
Application-specific integrated circuit designer Faraday Technology Corp (智原) yesterday said that although revenue this quarter would decline 30 percent from last quarter, it retained its full-year forecast of revenue growth of 100 percent. The company attributed the quarterly drop to a slowdown in customers’ production of chips using Faraday’s advanced packaging technology. The company is still confident about its revenue growth this year, given its strong “design-win” — or the projects it won to help customers design their chips, Faraday president Steve Wang (王國雍) told an online earnings conference. “The design-win this year is better than we expected. We believe we will win
Power supply and electronic components maker Delta Electronics Inc (台達電) yesterday said it plans to ship its new 1 megawatt charging systems for electric trucks and buses in the first half of next year at the earliest. The new charging piles, which deliver up to 1 megawatt of charging power, are designed for heavy-duty electric vehicles, and support a maximum current of 1,500 amperes and output of 1,250 volts, Delta said in a news release. “If everything goes smoothly, we could begin shipping those new charging systems as early as in the first half of next year,” a company official said. The new
SK Hynix Inc warned of increased volatility in the second half of this year despite resilient demand for artificial intelligence (AI) memory chips from big tech providers, reflecting the uncertainty surrounding US tariffs. The company reported a better-than-projected 158 percent jump in March-quarter operating income, propelled in part by stockpiling ahead of US President Donald Trump’s tariffs. SK Hynix stuck with a forecast for a doubling in demand for the high-bandwidth memory (HBM) essential to Nvidia Corp’s AI accelerators, which in turn drive giant data centers built by the likes of Microsoft Corp and Amazon.com Inc. That SK Hynix is maintaining its
RSS