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.
Taichung reported the steepest fall in completed home prices among the six special municipalities in the first quarter of this year, data compiled by Taiwan Realty Co (台灣房屋) showed yesterday. From January through last month, the average transaction price for completed homes in Taichung fell 8 percent from a year earlier to NT$299,000 (US$9,483) per ping (3.3m²), said Taiwan Realty, which compiled the data based on the government’s price registration platform. The decline could be attributed to many home buyers choosing relatively affordable used homes to live in themselves, instead of newly built homes in the city’s prime property market, Taiwan Realty
The government yesterday approved applications by Alphabet Inc’s Google to invest NT$27.08 billion (US$859.98 million) in Taiwan, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said in a statement. The Department of Investment Review approved two investments proposed by Google, with much of the funds to be used for data processing and electronic information supply services, as well as inventory procurement businesses in the semiconductor field, the ministry said. It marks the second consecutive year that Google has applied to increase its investment in Taiwan. Google plans to infuse NT$25.34 billion into Charter Investments Ltd (特許投資顧問) through its Singapore-based subsidiary Fructan Holdings Singapore Pte Ltd, and
JET JUICE: The war on Iran’s secondary effects have seen fuel prices skyrocket, knocking flight schedules down to earth in return as airlines struggle with costs Airline passengers should brace for more irritation in the next few months as carriers worldwide cancel flights and ground planes to cope with stratospheric increases in jet-fuel prices. Dutch flag carrier KLM is the latest company to cut its schedule, saying on Thursday that it would scrap 80 return flights at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport in the coming month. That puts it in the same league as United Airlines Holdings Inc, Deutsche Lufthansa AG and Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd, which have all pruned itineraries to mitigate costs. Global capacity for next month has been reduced by about 3 percentage points, with all
The US said it plans to help build a first-of-its-kind industrial hub in the Philippines to boost production of inputs crucial to US supply chains. The 4,000-acre hub is intended to be “a purpose-built platform for allied manufacturing” and “an investment acceleration hub where the specific industrial activities are shaped by market demand,” the US Department of State said on Thursday. The project — touted as an “economic security zone” — would be within the Luzon Economic Corridor, a flagship economic project backed by the US and Japan on the main Philippine island. The project was also described as “the first artificial intelligence
RSS