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.
Quanta Computer Inc (廣達) chairman Barry Lam (林百里) is expected to share his views about the artificial intelligence (AI) industry’s prospects during his speech at the company’s 37th anniversary ceremony, as AI servers have become a new growth engine for the equipment manufacturing service provider. Lam’s speech is much anticipated, as Quanta has risen as one of the world’s major AI server suppliers. The company reported a 30 percent year-on-year growth in consolidated revenue to NT$1.41 trillion (US$43.35 billion) last year, thanks to fast-growing demand for servers, especially those with AI capabilities. The company told investors in November last year that
Intel Corp has named Tasha Chuang (莊蓓瑜) to lead Intel Taiwan in a bid to reinforce relations between the company and its Taiwanese partners. The appointment of Chuang as general manager for Intel Taiwan takes effect on Thursday, the firm said in a statement yesterday. Chuang is to lead her team in Taiwan to pursue product development and sales growth in an effort to reinforce the company’s ties with its partners and clients, Intel said. Chuang was previously in charge of managing Intel’s ties with leading Taiwanese PC brand Asustek Computer Inc (華碩), which included helping Asustek strengthen its global businesses, the company
Taiwanese suppliers to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC, 台積電) are expected to follow the contract chipmaker’s step to invest in the US, but their relocation may be seven to eight years away, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) said yesterday. When asked by opposition Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Niu Hsu-ting (牛煦庭) in the legislature about growing concerns that TSMC’s huge investments in the US will prompt its suppliers to follow suit, Kuo said based on the chipmaker’s current limited production volume, it is unlikely to lead its supply chain to go there for now. “Unless TSMC completes its planned six
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
RSS