Property transactions in the nation’s six special municipalities last month totaled 19,876 units, up 7.6 percent from a year earlier, as real demand held resilient, especially among first-home buyers, analysts said on Wednesday.
The volume represented a mild 2.4 percent decline when compared with a month earlier based on data from Taipei, New Taipei City, Taoyuan, Taichung, Tainan and Kaohsiung, they said.
“Buyers with real demand quit staying on the side lines and took action after waves of unfavorable policy measures failed to trigger price corrections,” Great Home Realty Co (大家房屋) head researcher Mandy Lang (郎美囡) said, referring to the central bank’s selective credit controls on local lenders, the government’s ban on the transfers of presale housing contracts and upcoming property tax increases.
Photo: Hsu Yi-ping, Taipei Times
The recovery was most evident in Taoyuan, Taichung and Kaohsiung, where the number of deals increased 9 percent, 12.4 percent and 17.4 percent from a year earlier to 3,857, 3,880 and 3,146 units respectively, Lang said, adding that transactions in New Taipei City grew 4.1 percent year-on-year to 4,891 units.
Taipei and Tainan bucked the uptrend as their transactions slipped 0.2 percent and 0.1 percent to 2,268 and 1,834 units respectively, according to data on the separate local government’s Web sites.
The signs of stabilization failed to extend to Taipei because house prices in the capital have grown beyond the reach of first-home buyers, Lang said.
Sinyi Realty Inc (信義房屋) shared similar observations, pointing out that first-home buyers contributed more than 50 percent of last month’s transactions and houses valued between NT$7 million and NT$20 million (US$221,344 and US$632,411) accounted for 60 percent of the total.
House prices within budget sit at the top of the list of concerns among first-home buyers, instead of popular locations, Sinyi research manager Tseng Ching-der (曾敬德) said.
The phenomenon explained why small apartments have been the mainstream product, he said.
H&B Realty Co (住商不動產) research chief Jessica Hsu (徐佳馨) said the government lent support by rolling out a new home loan program that offers interest rates of 1.775 percent on mortgages for first-home buyers.
The program comes with a loan limit of NT$10 million, a grace period of five years and a mortgage duration of 40 years, significantly lowering the thresholds of owning homes for young people, Hsu said.
The favorable lending terms would drive people to buy homes with rents increasing, she said.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) last week recorded an increase in the number of shareholders to the highest in almost eight months, despite its share price falling 3.38 percent from the previous week, Taiwan Stock Exchange data released on Saturday showed. As of Friday, TSMC had 1.88 million shareholders, the most since the week of April 25 and an increase of 31,870 from the previous week, the data showed. The number of shareholders jumped despite a drop of NT$50 (US$1.59), or 3.38 percent, in TSMC’s share price from a week earlier to NT$1,430, as investors took profits from their earlier gains
In a high-security Shenzhen laboratory, Chinese scientists have built what Washington has spent years trying to prevent: a prototype of a machine capable of producing the cutting-edge semiconductor chips that power artificial intelligence (AI), smartphones and weapons central to Western military dominance, Reuters has learned. Completed early this year and undergoing testing, the prototype fills nearly an entire factory floor. It was built by a team of former engineers from Dutch semiconductor giant ASML who reverse-engineered the company’s extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV) machines, according to two people with knowledge of the project. EUV machines sit at the heart of a technological Cold
Taiwan’s long-term economic competitiveness will hinge not only on national champions like Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC, 台積電) but also on the widespread adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) and other emerging technologies, a US-based scholar has said. At a lecture in Taipei on Tuesday, Jeffrey Ding, assistant professor of political science at the George Washington University and author of "Technology and the Rise of Great Powers," argued that historical experience shows that general-purpose technologies (GPTs) — such as electricity, computers and now AI — shape long-term economic advantages through their diffusion across the broader economy. "What really matters is not who pioneers
TAIWAN VALUE CHAIN: Foxtron is to fully own Luxgen following the transaction and it plans to launch a new electric model, the Foxtron Bria, in Taiwan next year Yulon Motor Co (裕隆汽車) yesterday said that its board of directors approved the disposal of its electric vehicle (EV) unit, Luxgen Motor Co (納智捷汽車), to Foxtron Vehicle Technologies Co (鴻華先進) for NT$787.6 million (US$24.98 million). Foxtron, a half-half joint venture between Yulon affiliate Hua-Chuang Automobile Information Technical Center Co (華創車電) and Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), expects to wrap up the deal in the first quarter of next year. Foxtron would fully own Luxgen following the transaction, including five car distributing companies, outlets and all employees. The deal is subject to the approval of the Fair Trade Commission, Foxtron said. “Foxtron will be
RSS