Housing transactions in Taiwan’s six special municipalities last month shrank 15.3 percent from a year earlier to 19,824 units, as the central bank’s credit control measures dampened home buying interest.
Transactions in Taipei, New Taipei City and Tainan reported double-digit percentage retreats, and those in Kaohsiung and Taoyuan fell 8.1 percent and 0.6 percent respectively, while Taichung bucked the trend with a 2.1 percent increase, data from separate local land administrations showed on Monday.
“The negative impact of credit controls grew evident for the third straight month,” Sinyi Realty Inc (信義房屋) research manager Tseng Ching-ter (曾敬德) said, adding that the downturn might persist this month and beyond.
Photo: Hsu Yi-ping, Taipei Times
In the first 11 months of this year, total transactions in the six special municipalities increased 17.5 percent year-on-year to 249,864 units, although annual growth slowed from 21.6 percent in the first 10 months, data showed.
Still, overall housing deals for this year could hit an 11-year high of more than 350,000 units, thanks to a housing boom in the first eight months, Tseng said.
Reports of a cash crunch emerged in August when the central bank said it met with lenders for talks on self-disciplinary measures to curb real-estate lending as several banks moved close to their regulatory limits.
The central bank strictly tightened lending terms after voicing concerns about money overflowing to the real-estate sector, which would deny funding to other sectors and threaten the financial system’s stability in the event of house price corrections.
Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房屋) research head Chen Chin-ping (陳金萍) said the credit controls put off expectations of house price hikes any time soon.
House sellers would need to make price concessions if they are serious about leaving the market, she added.
ADVANCED: Previously, Taiwanese chip companies were restricted from building overseas fabs with technology less than two generations behind domestic factories Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp, would no longer be restricted from investing in next-generation 2-nanometer chip production in the US, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. However, the ministry added that the world’s biggest contract chipmaker would not be making any reckless decisions, given the weight of its up to US$30 billion investment. To safeguard Taiwan’s chip technology advantages, the government has barred local chipmakers from making chips using more advanced technologies at their overseas factories, in China particularly. Chipmakers were previously only allowed to produce chips using less advanced technologies, specifically
The New Taiwan dollar is on the verge of overtaking the yuan as Asia’s best carry-trade target given its lower risk of interest-rate and currency volatility. A strategy of borrowing the New Taiwan dollar to invest in higher-yielding alternatives has generated the second-highest return over the past month among Asian currencies behind the yuan, based on the Sharpe ratio that measures risk-adjusted relative returns. The New Taiwan dollar may soon replace its Chinese peer as the region’s favored carry trade tool, analysts say, citing Beijing’s efforts to support the yuan that can create wild swings in borrowing costs. In contrast,
VERTICAL INTEGRATION: The US fabless company’s acquisition of the data center manufacturer would not affect market competition, the Fair Trade Commission said The Fair Trade Commission has approved Advanced Micro Devices Inc’s (AMD) bid to fully acquire ZT International Group Inc for US$4.9 billion, saying it would not hamper market competition. As AMD is a fabless company that designs central processing units (CPUs) used in consumer electronics and servers, while ZT is a data center manufacturer, the vertical integration would not affect market competition, the commission said in a statement yesterday. ZT counts hyperscalers such as Microsoft Corp, Amazon.com Inc and Google among its major clients and plays a minor role in deciding the specifications of data centers, given the strong bargaining power of
TARIFF SURGE: The strong performance could be attributed to the growing artificial intelligence device market and mass orders ahead of potential US tariffs, analysts said The combined revenue of companies listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange and the Taipei Exchange for the whole of last year totaled NT$44.66 trillion (US$1.35 trillion), up 12.8 percent year-on-year and hit a record high, data compiled by investment consulting firm CMoney showed on Saturday. The result came after listed firms reported a 23.92 percent annual increase in combined revenue for last month at NT$4.1 trillion, the second-highest for the month of December on record, and posted a 15.63 percent rise in combined revenue for the December quarter at NT$12.25 billion, the highest quarterly figure ever, the data showed. Analysts attributed the
RSS