Property transactions last month plunged 47.5 percent year-on-year to 12,613 units in the nation’s six special municipalities, as an ongoing economic slowdown and the Lunar New Year holiday drove buyers to the sidelines, real-estate brokers said on Wednesday.
The volume was a 39.2 percent retreat from a month earlier, suggesting weak sentiment at the start of this year, said Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房屋), the nation’s largest broker by number of offices.
“Property transfers in January slumped to the lowest level in nearly four years, dragged by economic uncertainty and unfavorable policies,” Evertrust Rehouse deputy research manager Chen Chin-ping (陳金萍) said, citing the ban on the resale of presale contracts, interest rate hikes, and a softening economic outlook at home and abroad.
Specifically, deals in New Taipei City and Kaohsiung plummeted 58.2 percent and 48.7 percent respectively, their worst showings in 13 years, Chen said, adding that the pace of decline exceeded 40 percent in Taipei, Taoyuan, Taichung and Tainan.
The nation’s economy last quarter contracted 0.86 percent, reversing three previous quarters of growth, as exporters struggled with capacity and inventory adjustments that appear worse and longer than expected, Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics data showed.
Major technology companies have provided conservative guidance for business this quarter and beyond, and have cut or postponed capital spending to cope with poor order visibility.
That scenario means the government and consumers have to assume the role of growth drivers.
The statistics agency is to update its GDP forecast later this month.
In addition, four interest rate hikes last year pushed mortgage burdens in December to a seven-year high and rates are likely to climb further as inflationary pressures remain higher than the central bank’s 2 percent target, Chen said.
Housing and construction loans in December advanced at the softest pace in three years to NT$9.38 trillion (US$315.6 billion) and NT$3.98 trillion respectively, suggesting tightening measures had achieved their intended effect, the central bank said.
The monetary policymaker has sought to induce a soft landing for house prices and urged caution in financial leveraging on concerns economic downside risks would intensify this year.
The timing of the Lunar New Year holiday also contributed to the property market’s poor performance, Evertrust Rehouse said.
The 10-day holiday fell entirely in January this year, while partly falling in February last year, and cut working days by 25 percent from a year earlier, Chen said.
People assigned more importance to grocery shopping, house cleaning and family reunions over the holiday, but might resume house hunting this month, Chen added.
RUN IT BACK: A succesful first project working with hyperscalers to design chips encouraged MediaTek to start a second project, aiming to hit stride in 2028 MediaTek Inc (聯發科), the world’s biggest smartphone chip supplier, yesterday said it is engaging a second hyperscaler to help design artificial intelligence (AI) accelerators used in data centers following a similar project expected to generate revenue streams soon. The first AI accelerator project is to bring in US$1 billion revenue next year and several billion US dollars more in 2027, MediaTek chief executive officer Rick Tsai (蔡力行) told a virtual investor conference yesterday. The second AI accelerator project is expected to contribute to revenue beginning in 2028, Tsai said. MediaTek yesterday raised its revenue forecast for the global AI accelerator used
TEMPORARY TRUCE: China has made concessions to ease rare earth trade controls, among others, while Washington holds fire on a 100% tariff on all Chinese goods China is effectively suspending implementation of additional export controls on rare earth metals and terminating investigations targeting US companies in the semiconductor supply chain, the White House announced. The White House on Saturday issued a fact sheet outlining some details of the trade pact agreed to earlier in the week by US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) that aimed to ease tensions between the world’s two largest economies. Under the deal, China is to issue general licenses valid for exports of rare earths, gallium, germanium, antimony and graphite “for the benefit of US end users and their suppliers
Dutch chipmaker Nexperia BV’s China unit yesterday said that it had established sufficient inventories of finished goods and works-in-progress, and that its supply chain remained secure and stable after its parent halted wafer supplies. The Dutch company suspended supplies of wafers to its Chinese assembly plant a week ago, calling it “a direct consequence of the local management’s recent failure to comply with the agreed contractual payment terms,” Reuters reported on Friday last week. Its China unit called Nexperia’s suspension “unilateral” and “extremely irresponsible,” adding that the Dutch parent’s claim about contractual payment was “misleading and highly deceptive,” according to a statement
Artificial intelligence (AI) giant Nvidia Corp’s most advanced chips would be reserved for US companies and kept out of China and other countries, US President Donald Trump said. During an interview that aired on Sunday on CBS’ 60 Minutes program and in comments to reporters aboard Air Force One, Trump said only US customers should have access to the top-end Blackwell chips offered by Nvidia, the world’s most valuable company by market capitalization. “The most advanced, we will not let anybody have them other than the United States,” he told CBS, echoing remarks made earlier to reporters as he returned to Washington
RSS