Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房屋), Taiwan’s largest property broker by number of offices, expects up to a 23 percent annual decline in housing transactions in the first half of this year, as its first-quarter results are worse than expected so far, high-ranking officials said yesterday.
While buying interest has picked up slightly from a quarter earlier, most buyers are hesitant to close deals due to expectations that prices will decline amid financial and economic woes, Evertrust general manager Yeh Ling-chi (葉凌棋) told a news conference in Taipei.
Property deals for this year are likely to total 132,000 to 140,000 units by June — a retreat of 18 to 23 percent from the same period last year, Yeh said.
Photo: Hsu Yi-ping, Taipei Times
The conservative forecast came after transactions nationwide in the first two months of the year slumped 28.8 percent annually to 37,048 units, he said, adding that the retreat grew to 29.4 percent in Taipei, New Taipei City, Taoyuan, Hsinchu City, Taichung, Tainan and Kaohsiung.
“An economic slowdown at home and abroad fueled expectations of price concessions, but sellers generally refused to concede, thereby slowing transactions,” Yeh said, adding that recent bank collapses in the US and Europe have encouraged caution and patience.
However, inflation and continued monetary tightening have given sellers reason to hold firm, Evertrust’s quarterly survey showed.
The poll found that 40 percent of respondents were expecting price declines, down 6 percentage points from three months earlier, while 31 percent had a neutral view.
That is because things become more expensive in times of inflation and interest rate hikes, Evertrust research manager Daniel Chen (陳賜傑) said.
About 64 percent of respondents expected the central bank to raise interest rates this year to curb inflation and account for the difference in interest rates between Taiwan and the US, Chen said.
A rapid recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic among retailers and restaurants has bolstered the occupancy rates of storefronts and dining spaces, he said.
Of the survey’s respondents, 64 percent expected vacancy rates to drop, while 74 percent expressed an interest in resuming social gatherings and eating out, Chen said.
He said 86 percent supported the government’s ban on the transfer of presale house purchase agreements, saying that the practice would help limit property speculation.
Fifty percent of people said the ban would not affect their plans to buy presale housing, he said.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by