Mortgage interest rates last quarter spiked to a 15-year high of 2.23 percent despite a decline in loan applications, as local lenders slowed real-estate lending to support the central bank’s credit controls, Taiwan Realty Co (台灣房屋) said yesterday.
“The data suggests that buying a home is growing increasingly difficult,” the brokers said, citing data from the Joint Credit Information Center (聯徵中心).
The uptick in mortgage burdens came even though the central bank left its policy rates unchanged in the past two quarters and hiked the lenders’ required reserve ratios to drain money from the market, head researcher Charlene Chang (張旭嵐) said.
Photo: CNA
Further, the monetary policymaker tightened lending terms for non-first houses nationwide to pre-empt a housing bubble, as house loans neared the record high of the financial crisis in 2009.
The average mortgage burden stood at NT$10.43 million (US$320,844) across Taiwan, while the number of mortgages shrank by 6.5 percent, or 4,235, to 60,908 during the July-to-September period, Chang said, adding that mortgage burdens in Taipei are higher at NT$18.32 million, consistent with the capital city’s unaffordable house prices.
The decrease in loan applications showed the selective credit controls succeeded in cooling real-estate lending and the impact would grow more evident this quarter and beyond, Chang said.
It would now take three to four months for lenders to review mortgage applications, from one to one-and-a-half months before the tightening, Sinyi Realty Inc (信義房屋) said, adding that lenders raised borrowing costs to discourage prospective buyers and moderate mortgage operation.
Consequently, the central bank might choose to stay put in its board meeting next week and give the market more time to assimilate to its credit controls, Sinyi said.
The current quarter is traditionally the high season for the housing market, but a slowdown appears inevitable, Taiwan Realty said.
Developers have generally turned conservative about launching presale projects next year and indicated plans to trim price tags in areas with heavy supply, Chang said.
Huaku Development Co (華固建設) said on Wednesday that it and peers would adopt a low-key business approach, a departure from the bull market in the first half of this year.
The strategy suggests a decline in the volume of presale projects and new houses next year, Huaku chairman Chung Jung-chang (鍾榮昌) said, predicting that house prices would hold steady in Taipei and New Taipei City, but would drop 5 percent to 10 percent elsewhere.
Property researcher My Housing Monthly (住展雜誌) said the conservative practices stem from soft demand rather than an attempt to appease the central bank.
Unsold house projects last month soared to 1,017 in northern Taiwan alone, with the most difficulty in Yilan and Taoyuan, the publication said.
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) today announced that his company has selected "Beitou Shilin" in Taipei for its new Taiwan office, called Nvidia Constellation, putting an end to months of speculation. Industry sources have said that the tech giant has been eyeing the Beitou Shilin Science Park as the site of its new overseas headquarters, and speculated that the new headquarters would be built on two plots of land designated as "T17" and "T18," which span 3.89 hectares in the park. "I think it's time for us to reveal one of the largest products we've ever built," Huang said near the
China yesterday announced anti-dumping duties as high as 74.9 percent on imports of polyoxymethylene (POM) copolymers, a type of engineering plastic, from Taiwan, the US, the EU and Japan. The Chinese Ministry of Commerce’s findings conclude a probe launched in May last year, shortly after the US sharply increased tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles, computer chips and other imports. POM copolymers can partially replace metals such as copper and zinc, and have various applications, including in auto parts, electronics and medical equipment, the Chinese ministry has said. In January, it said initial investigations had determined that dumping was taking place, and implemented preliminary
Intel Corp yesterday reinforced its determination to strengthen its partnerships with Taiwan’s ecosystem partners including original-electronic-manufacturing (OEM) companies such as Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) and chipmaker United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電). “Tonight marks a new beginning. We renew our new partnership with Taiwan ecosystem,” Intel new chief executive officer Tan Lip-bu (陳立武) said at a dinner with representatives from the company’s local partners, celebrating the 40th anniversary of the US chip giant’s presence in Taiwan. Tan took the reins at Intel six weeks ago aiming to reform the chipmaker and revive its past glory. This is the first time Tan
CUSTOMERS’ BURDEN: TSMC already has operations in the US and is a foundry, so any tariff increase would mostly affect US customers, not the company, the minister said Taiwanese manufacturers are “not afraid” of US tariffs, but are concerned about being affected more heavily than regional economic competitors Japan and South Korea, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) said. “Taiwan has many advantages that other countries do not have, the most notable of which is its semiconductor ecosystem,” Kuo said. The US “must rely on Taiwan” to boost its microchip manufacturing capacities, Kuo said in an interview ahead of his one-year anniversary in office tomorrow. Taiwan has submitted a position paper under Section 232 of the US Trade Expansion Act to explain the “complementary relationship” between Taiwan and the US
RSS