The business climate monitor for presale residential projects and new houses in northern Taiwan last month turned “yellow-red,” the first signal indicating a boom in 16 years, My Housing Monthly (住展雜誌) said yesterday.
The total score of constituent measures stood at 52.6, rising from 45.1 in February and ending 15 consecutive months of “green” signals, which suggests steady growth, My Housing Monthly spokesman Chen Ping-chen (陳炳辰) said.
The impressive showing came after developers released NT$100 billion (US$3.09 billion) of presale projects in northern Taiwan to take advantage of the spring sales season, which started late last month and runs until the end of this month, Chen said.
Photo: Hsu Yi-ping, Taipei Times
Projects in New Taipei City’s Tamsui District (淡水) and Sanchong District (三重), Taoyuan’s Gueishan District (龜山) and Hsinchu County’s Baoshan Township (寶山) are an easy sell, he said.
Favorable lending terms, chiefly interest rate subsidies for first-home purchases, also helped expedite transactions, he said.
The magazine said the measure on price concessions went down to 9.92 percent, as buyers were generally willing to increase their budgets, while sellers mostly refused to budge.
The reading on buying interest was little changed at 7.48, it added.
Chen said that the momentum would sustain through the first half of this year, as the new administration of president-elect William Lai (賴清德) would boost expectations of reforms.
Sinyi Realty Inc (信義房屋), the nation’s sole listed broker, arrived at similar conclusions in a report released on Wednesday, saying transactions of presale projects totaled 19,000 units in the first two months and generated NT$320.2 billion of sales.
The volume represented a sharp increase of 150 percent from a year earlier when the government’s plan to bar transfers of presale house purchase agreements sidelined developers and potential buyers, Sinyi research manager Tseng Ching-der (曾敬德) said.
The sentiment started to turn around in the fourth quarter of last year when exports, Taiwan’s main GDP growth driver, increased after several quarters of inventory adjustments, Tseng said.
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
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
Power supply and electronic components maker Delta Electronics Inc (台達電) yesterday said second-quarter revenue is expected to surpass the first quarter, which rose 30 percent year-on-year to NT$118.92 billion (US$3.71 billion). Revenue this quarter is likely to grow, as US clients have front-loaded orders ahead of US President Donald Trump’s planned tariffs on Taiwanese goods, Delta chairman Ping Cheng (鄭平) said at an earnings conference in Taipei, referring to the 90-day pause in tariff implementation Trump announced on April 9. While situations in the third and fourth quarters remain unclear, “We will not halt our long-term deployments and do not plan to
The New Taiwan dollar and Taiwanese stocks surged on signs that trade tensions between the world’s top two economies might start easing and as US tech earnings boosted the outlook of the nation’s semiconductor exports. The NT dollar strengthened as much as 3.8 percent versus the US dollar to 30.815, the biggest intraday gain since January 2011, closing at NT$31.064. The benchmark TAIEX jumped 2.73 percent to outperform the region’s equity gauges. Outlook for global trade improved after China said it is assessing possible trade talks with the US, providing a boost for the nation’s currency and shares. As the NT dollar
RSS