Taiwan’s housing boom lost momentum this month when major property brokers reported double-digit percentage declines in deals after the central bank asked lenders to slow mortgage operations to avoid an overconcentration of real-estate lending.
Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房屋) transactions shrank 23 percent from one month earlier as people took a summer vacation or shunned closing deals during Ghost Month, Evertrust deputy research head Chen Chin-ping (陳金萍) said.
The slowdown was due to an apparent cash crunch as banks decline or slow mortgage applications to prevent more money from flowing to real-estate properties, Chen said.
Photo: CNA
As of June 30, real-estate lending accounted for 37.4 percent of the banking system’s loans, close to the record of 37.9 percent, the central bank said last week, asking lenders to draw up quantitative control measures by Friday next week detailing how they would limit mortgages to help prevent an overconcentration of real-estate loans.
The central bank is likely to adopt more credit controls next month if voluntary tightening proves ineffective, Chen said.
Transactions dropped 8 percent compared with a year earlier as the low base effect also faded, Chen said.
The government in August last year introduced favorable lending terms, including interest subsidies and a five-year grace period, prompting an influx of first-home buyers.
Chinatrust Real Estate Co (中信房屋) sales this month tumbled 16.4 percent from last month, while flagging 2.5 percent from a year earlier, a Chinatrust broker said.
Chinatrust attributed the retreat mainly to the central bank’s quantitative controls, although the Ghost Month also dampened interest.
Fewer people displayed interest in house-hunting this month, as mortgage applications took longer and many sought help from the Financial Supervisory Commission, Chinatrust said.
Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) said he is to meet with the central bank next week to make sure the quantitative controls measures would not affect first-home purchases.
Meanwhile, Taiwan Realty Co (台灣房屋) said its outlets observed a 20.2 percent slump in housing deals this month, or a 15.9 percent decrease from a year earlier.
Several lenders have voluntarily put a halt to new mortgage operations on concerns that their house loans might approach the statutory limit of 30 percent due to house price hikes.
‘SWASTICAR’: Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s close association with Donald Trump has prompted opponents to brand him a ‘Nazi’ and resulted in a dramatic drop in sales Demonstrators descended on Tesla Inc dealerships across the US, and in Europe and Canada on Saturday to protest company chief Elon Musk, who has amassed extraordinary power as a top adviser to US President Donald Trump. Waving signs with messages such as “Musk is stealing our money” and “Reclaim our country,” the protests largely took place peacefully following fiery episodes of vandalism on Tesla vehicles, dealerships and other facilities in recent weeks that US officials have denounced as terrorism. Hundreds rallied on Saturday outside the Tesla dealership in Manhattan. Some blasted Musk, the world’s richest man, while others demanded the shuttering of his
ADVERSARIES: The new list includes 11 entities in China and one in Taiwan, which is a local branch of Chinese cloud computing firm Inspur Group The US added dozens of entities to a trade blacklist on Tuesday, the US Department of Commerce said, in part to disrupt Beijing’s artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced computing capabilities. The action affects 80 entities from countries including China, the United Arab Emirates and Iran, with the commerce department citing their “activities contrary to US national security and foreign policy.” Those added to the “entity list” are restricted from obtaining US items and technologies without government authorization. “We will not allow adversaries to exploit American technology to bolster their own militaries and threaten American lives,” US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick said. The entities
Minister of Finance Chuang Tsui-yun (莊翠雲) yesterday told lawmakers that she “would not speculate,” but a “response plan” has been prepared in case Taiwan is targeted by US President Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariffs, which are to be announced on Wednesday next week. The Trump administration, including US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, has said that much of the proposed reciprocal tariffs would focus on the 15 countries that have the highest trade surpluses with the US. Bessent has referred to those countries as the “dirty 15,” but has not named them. Last year, Taiwan’s US$73.9 billion trade surplus with the US
Prices of gasoline and diesel products at domestic gas stations are to fall NT$0.2 and NT$0.1 per liter respectively this week, even though international crude oil prices rose last week, CPC Corp, Taiwan (台灣中油) and Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化) said yesterday. International crude oil prices continued rising last week, as the US Energy Information Administration reported a larger-than-expected drop in US commercial crude oil inventories, CPC said in a statement. Based on the company’s floating oil price formula, the cost of crude oil rose 2.38 percent last week from a week earlier, it said. News that US President Donald Trump plans a “secondary
RSS