The Ministry of Finance (MOF) yesterday said it had found 1,502 suspected cases of dummy buyers and abuses of preferential house loans in contravention of the self-occupancy rule.
The announcement follows the ministry’s move to crack down on abuses of favorable lending terms that include interest subsidies, a five-year grace period and mortgages of up to 40 years to help people purchase their first home for self-occupancy.
“With help from state-run banks and government data, we spotted 170 dummy buyers and another 1,332 mortgagers who leased out their houses,” it said in a statement.
Photo: CNA
The ministry has drawn criticism for rekindling housing fever by introducing the favorable lending terms in August last year.
Critics say the program and stock market rally have canceled the effect of a series of credit controls and policy measures that had earlier slowed housing transactions and price hikes.
The ministry said the results came from its first wave of inspections of housing deals from Aug. 1 last year to March 31 this year.
Housing transactions carried out from April 1 would be the focus of the second-wave probe, the ministry said, adding that it is confident that loan abuses would drop from June 27 when mortgagers are required to sign an affidavit stating that the house they are buying is for self-occupancy.
Violators would have their preferential lending terms revoked and they must return the interest differential, the ministry said.
In addition, favorable lending terms are limited to once per person, meaning that those who sell a home purchased under the program would not qualify in the future.
Property investors and wealthy people have allegedly used dummy buyers, including their children, to take advantage of the program and advance asset allocation purposes.
Tightened mortgage reviews appear to be effective, with loan applications last month declining 10.74 percent to NT$56.77 billion (US$1.74 billion) and 12.44 percent to 7,244 units, the ministry said.
The program is aimed at helping households without their own homes and unqualified buyers should not abuse the government’s goodwill, it said.
H&B Realty Co (住商不動產), the nation’s largest broker by number of franchises, said that the incidence of abuse was quite low, accounting for only 2.3 percent of 65,000 approved applications.
The small number suggests that real demand underpinned the housing boom for the past 11 months and should continue to lend support to the market, H&B head researcher Jessica Hsu (徐佳馨) said.
The double-digit percentage drop last month showed that the market took the government’s warnings seriously, Great Home Realty Co (大家房屋) said.
A longer observation of the market is needed to determine if the boom would be sustainable for the remainder of the year, it said.
NEW IDENTITY: Known for its software, India has expanded into hardware, with its semiconductor industry growing from US$38bn in 2023 to US$45bn to US$50bn India on Saturday inaugurated its first semiconductor assembly and test facility, a milestone in the government’s push to reduce dependence on foreign chipmakers and stake a claim in a sector dominated by China. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi opened US firm Micron Technology Inc’s semiconductor assembly, test and packaging unit in his home state of Gujarat, hailing the “dawn of a new era” for India’s technology ambitions. “When young Indians look back in the future, they will see this decade as the turning point in our tech future,” Modi told the event, which was broadcast on his YouTube channel. The plant would convert
Nanya Technology Corp (南亞科技) yesterday said the DRAM supply crunch could extend through 2028, as the artificial intelligence (AI) boom has led the world’s major memory makers to dramatically reduce production of standard DRAM and allocate a significant portion of their capacity for high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips. The most severe supply constraints would stretch to the first half of next year due to “very limited” increases in new DRAM capacity worldwide, Nanya Technology president Lee Pei-ing (李培瑛) told a news briefing. The company plans to increase monthly 12-inch wafer capacity to 20,000 in the first half of 2028 after a
Property transactions in the nation’s six special municipalities plunged last month, as a lengthy Lunar New Year holiday combined with ongoing credit tightening dampened housing market activity, data compiled by local land administration offices released on Monday showed. The six cities recorded a total of 10,480 property transfers last month, down 42.5 percent from January and marking the second-lowest monthly level on record, the data showed. “The sharp drop largely reflected seasonal factors and tighter credit conditions,” Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房屋) deputy research manager Chen Chin-ping (陳金萍) said. The nine-day Lunar New Year holiday fell in February this year, reducing
New vehicle sales in Taiwan plunged about 37 percent sequentially last month as the long Lunar New Year holiday and 228 Peace Memorial Day holiday cut short the number of working days, along with the lingering uncertainty over import tax cuts on US vehicles, market researcher U-Car said in a report yesterday. New car sales last month totaled 22,043, slumping from 35,073 units in January and down 19.89 percent from 37,515 in February last year, U-Car data showed. Sales of imported luxury cars, led by Mercedes-Benz, plummeted about 45 percent to 3,109 units last month from 5,663 units in the previous month,
RSS