Property transactions in the six special municipalities last quarter plunged 24.1 percent from a year earlier to 49,290 units, dragged by weak sentiment, although buying interest last month showed a noticeable improvement.
It was the lowest volume since 2018 as a series of interest rate hikes and unfavorable policy measures cast a shadow on the market.
“The ban on transfers of presale house purchase agreements and monetary tightening sidelined prospective buyers looking for bargains,” Great Home Realty Co (大家房屋) head researcher Mandy Lang (郎美囡) said on Thursday.
Photo: Hsu Yi-ping, Taipei Times
PRICING INFLEXIBILITY
However, expectations that prices would fall have yet to materialize, as sellers held firm, buoyed by a government pledge that the upcoming ban would not affect existing deals.
Weighed by economic uncertainty and pricing concerns, transaction during the January-to-March period fell 28 percent to 5,677 units in Taipei, slumped 25 percent to 12,521 units in New Taipei City and dropped 27.8 percent to 8,190 units in Taoyuan, government data showed.
Deals declined 23 percent to 9,870 units in Taichung, decreased 19 percent to 4,932 units in Tainan and fell 22 percent to 8,025 units in Kaohsiung.
Sellers would rather hold onto their properties than accept what they deem as unreasonable or humiliating offers, H&B Realty Co (住商不動產) research head Jessica Hsu (徐佳馨) said.
Pricing inflexibility accounted in part for the absence of panic selling — unlike in 2016 before the introduction of combined property taxes that drove investors to cut prices and exit the market, Hsu said.
MARCH PICKUP
The gloomy sentiment eased somewhat last month, with transactions in the six special municipalities standing at 20,860 units, down 17.4 percent year-on-year, but up 31.9 percent from February, Sinyi Realty Inc (信義房屋) said.
Pent-up real demand underpinned the pickup after price corrections failed to materialize, Sinyi research manager Tseng Ching-der (曾進德) said.
More working days and the completion of new residential projects also lent support to last month’s data, Tseng said.
Developers wrapped up construction of presale housing complexes in Taoyuan’s Gueishan District (龜山) and Tainan’s Gueiren District (歸仁), Taiwan Realty Co (台灣房屋) said.
Transactions are likely to stay soft in line with an economic slowdown, but the room for price corrections is limited given higher building material costs, the broker said.
CAUTIOUS RECOVERY: While the manufacturing sector returned to growth amid the US-China trade truce, firms remain wary as uncertainty clouds the outlook, the CIER said The local manufacturing sector returned to expansion last month, as the official purchasing managers’ index (PMI) rose 2.1 points to 51.0, driven by a temporary easing in US-China trade tensions, the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. The PMI gauges the health of the manufacturing industry, with readings above 50 indicating expansion and those below 50 signaling contraction. “Firms are not as pessimistic as they were in April, but they remain far from optimistic,” CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) said at a news conference. The full impact of US tariff decisions is unlikely to become clear until later this month
Popular vape brands such as Geek Bar might get more expensive in the US — if you can find them at all. Shipments of vapes from China to the US ground to a near halt last month from a year ago, official data showed, hit by US President Donald Trump’s tariffs and a crackdown on unauthorized e-cigarettes in the world’s biggest market for smoking alternatives. That includes Geek Bar, a brand of flavored vapes that is not authorized to sell in the US, but which had been widely available due to porous import controls. One retailer, who asked not to be named, because
CHIP DUTIES: TSMC said it voiced its concerns to Washington about tariffs, telling the US commerce department that it wants ‘fair treatment’ to protect its competitiveness Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday reiterated robust business prospects for this year as strong artificial intelligence (AI) chip demand from Nvidia Corp and other customers would absorb the impacts of US tariffs. “The impact of tariffs would be indirect, as the custom tax is the importers’ responsibility, not the exporters,” TSMC chairman and chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) said at the chipmaker’s annual shareholders’ meeting in Hsinchu City. TSMC’s business could be affected if people become reluctant to buy electronics due to inflated prices, Wei said. In addition, the chipmaker has voiced its concern to the US Department of Commerce
STILL LOADED: Last year’s richest person, Quanta Computer Inc chairman Barry Lam, dropped to second place despite an 8 percent increase in his wealth to US$12.6 billion Staff writer, with CNA Daniel Tsai (蔡明忠) and Richard Tsai (蔡明興), the brothers who run Fubon Group (富邦集團), topped the Forbes list of Taiwan’s 50 richest people this year, released on Wednesday in New York. The magazine said that a stronger New Taiwan dollar pushed the combined wealth of Taiwan’s 50 richest people up 13 percent, from US$174 billion to US$197 billion, with 36 of the people on the list seeing their wealth increase. That came as Taiwan’s economy grew 4.6 percent last year, its fastest pace in three years, driven by the strong performance of the semiconductor industry, the magazine said. The Tsai
RSS