Commercial property transactions in Taiwan increased 2.8 percent to NT$137 billion (US$4.46 billion) this year, mainly due to demand for offices and factories, but land deals tumbled 20.4 percent to a six-year low of NT128.4 billion due to unfavorable lending terms, Colliers International Taiwan (高力國際) said on Wednesday.
The property market would be stronger next year, as a monetary tightening cycle is likely over, giving firms more financial muscle to expand capacity and boost their real-estate holdings, the property broker said.
Self-occupancy demand for offices and factories contributed 53 percent of commercial property deals, or NT$73.2 billion, Colliers Taiwan senior research director Eilleen Liang (梁儀盈) told a news conference in Taipei, citing transaction data for the year to Monday.
Photo: Hsu Yi-ping, Taipei Times
A real-estate investment trust in June sold two office buildings in Taipei’s Songshan District (松山) for NT$2.98 billion and NT$2.45 billion, suggesting a premium of 1.1 percent and 5.3 percent respectively despite a sluggish economy, Liang said.
As for industrial property deals, a Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) affiliate bought a factory complex in New Taipei City’s Tucheng District (土城) and Topco Scientific Co (崇越科技), a distributor of semiconductor materials, purchased an office building in Taipei’s Neihu District (內湖), Colliers Taiwan said.
Local insurers, normally the main commercial property players, failed to make the list of the top 10 deals this year, Colliers Taiwan managing director Andrew Liu (劉學龍) said, calling the situation rare.
Liu attributed the absence to a series of interest rate hikes that drove up the minimum yield requirement to 2.875 percent for real-estate investments by insurance companies.
Rising property prices make it difficult to pass the test in the first place, he added.
Land deals were weaker despite help from auctions of public plots of land in Taichung and Kaohsiung this quarter, Liu said.
“It was unusual to see no land deals in excess of NT$5 billion this year,” Liu said, adding that credit controls and other unfavorable measures were to blame.
Hung Yuan Development Co (宏園建設) and Ruicheng Construction Co (瑞誠建設) jointly bought a plot of land in Taipei’s Beitou District (北投) for NT$4.79 billion, making it the largest deal by value, Colliers Taiwan said.
Looking ahead, there is no reason not to be positive about the property market, Liu said.
The world is keen about the prospects for artificial intelligence, so Taiwanese firms in the supply chain would benefit and need more office space, Colliers Taiwan said.
Local insurers and developers also would boost their holdings once the US Federal Reserve lowers interest rates, it said, adding that inflation pressure appears to have been brought under control.
To many, Tatu City on the outskirts of Nairobi looks like a success. The first city entirely built by a private company to be operational in east Africa, with about 25,000 people living and working there, it accounts for about two-thirds of all foreign investment in Kenya. Its low-tax status has attracted more than 100 businesses including Heineken, coffee brand Dormans, and the biggest call-center and cold-chain transport firms in the region. However, to some local politicians, Tatu City has looked more like a target for extortion. A parade of governors have demanded land worth millions of dollars in exchange
An Indonesian animated movie is smashing regional box office records and could be set for wider success as it prepares to open beyond the Southeast Asian archipelago’s silver screens. Jumbo — a film based on the adventures of main character, Don, a large orphaned Indonesian boy facing bullying at school — last month became the highest-grossing Southeast Asian animated film, raking in more than US$8 million. Released at the end of March to coincide with the Eid holidays after the Islamic fasting month of Ramadan, the movie has hit 8 million ticket sales, the third-highest in Indonesian cinema history, Film
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) revenue jumped 48 percent last month, underscoring how electronics firms scrambled to acquire essential components before global tariffs took effect. The main chipmaker for Apple Inc and Nvidia Corp reported monthly sales of NT$349.6 billion (US$11.6 billion). That compares with the average analysts’ estimate for a 38 percent rise in second-quarter revenue. US President Donald Trump’s trade war is prompting economists to retool GDP forecasts worldwide, casting doubt over the outlook for everything from iPhone demand to computing and datacenter construction. However, TSMC — a barometer for global tech spending given its central role in the
Alchip Technologies Ltd (世芯), an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) designer specializing in server chips, expects revenue to decline this year due to sagging demand for 5-nanometer artificial intelligence (AI) chips from a North America-based major customer, a company executive said yesterday. That would be the first contraction in revenue for Alchip as it has been enjoying strong revenue growth over the past few years, benefiting from cloud-service providers’ moves to reduce dependence on Nvidia Corp’s expensive AI chips by building their own AI accelerator by outsourcing chip design. The 5-nanometer chip was supposed to be a new growth engine as the lifecycle
RSS