The nation’s major housing brokers this month reported a slump in transactions year-on-year despite a pickup from last month, as loan restrictions and economic uncertainty dampened buying interest.
Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房屋), the nation’s largest property broker by number of offices, said it observed a 41 percent retreat in deals and the slowdown hit every major region.
Transactions tumbled 35 percent in Taipei, 39 percent in New Taipei City, 47 percent in Taoyuan, 49 percent in Hsinchu, 44 percent in Taichung, 38 percent in Tainan and 40 percent in Kaohsiung, the broker said, citing internal data.
Photo: CNA
Evertrust deputy research head Chen Chin-ping (陳金萍) attributed the poor showing to economic headwinds, the central bank’s credit controls and a high base.
The housing market approached its peak in May last year on the back of supportive policy measures and inflation expectations, she said.
Buyers have turned conservative even though the US and China have agreed to a 90-day truce in tariff exchanges that would allow transactions to pick up compared with last month, Chen said.
However, buyer confidence recovered only modestly as uncertainties linked to tariffs linger and mortgage loans remain difficult to obtain, Chen added.
“The absence of a long-term agreement continues to cast a shadow over the property market,” Chen said.
Taiwan is vulnerable to fluctuations in global trade and a slowdown in key trading partners could weigh on its economic growth, affecting job stability and household income — two critical factors for buyers, Chen said.
Likewise, H&B Realty Co (住商不動產), the nation’s largest broker by number of franchises, said that transactions in its network constituted only half of the volume recorded in May last year, despite there being more working days in the month this year.
Buying interest remained soft, although some homeowners — especially those selling old apartments or less desirable properties — lowered their asking prices to facilitate deals, H&B chief researcher Jessica Hsu (徐佳馨) said, adding that the situation is unlikely to turn around in the short term.
Deals tumbled 51.1 percent in New Taipei City, 52.7 percent in Taoyuan and 47.9 percent in Kaohsiung, Hsu said.
Pre-sale home deliveries in northern Taiwan added to supply, but buyers preferred to wait and see, she said.
Chinatrust Real Estate Co (中信房屋) shared a similarly bleak report after transactions at its network declined 30.8 percent this month from a year earlier.
The downtrend is consistent across the six major municipalities: deals slumped 28.3 percent in Taipei, 33.3 percent in New Taipei City, 27.7 percent in Taoyuan, 28.9 percent in Taichung, 32.8 percent in Tainan and 36.7 percent in Kaohsiung, the broker said.
Chinatrust recommended that people prioritize buying a home for self-occupancy and carefully assess their financial standing, as the market is likely to consolidate for a while.
“It is wise to avoid rushing into the market or blindly chase high prices,” the broker said.
With this year’s Semicon Taiwan trade show set to kick off on Wednesday, market attention has turned to the mass production of advanced packaging technologies and capacity expansion in Taiwan and the US. With traditional scaling reaching physical limits, heterogeneous integration and packaging technologies have emerged as key solutions. Surging demand for artificial intelligence (AI), high-performance computing (HPC) and high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips has put technologies such as chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS), integrated fan-out (InFO), system on integrated chips (SoIC), 3D IC and fan-out panel-level packaging (FOPLP) at the center of semiconductor innovation, making them a major focus at this year’s trade show, according
DEBUT: The trade show is to feature 17 national pavilions, a new high for the event, including from Canada, Costa Rica, Lithuania, Sweden and Vietnam for the first time The Semicon Taiwan trade show, which opens on Wednesday, is expected to see a new high in the number of exhibitors and visitors from around the world, said its organizer, SEMI, which has described the annual event as the “Olympics of the semiconductor industry.” SEMI, which represents companies in the electronics manufacturing and design supply chain, and touts the annual exhibition as the most influential semiconductor trade show in the world, said more than 1,200 enterprises from 56 countries are to showcase their innovations across more than 4,100 booths, and that the event could attract 100,000 visitors. This year’s event features 17
EXPORT GROWTH: The AI boom has shortened chip cycles to just one year, putting pressure on chipmakers to accelerate development and expand packaging capacity Developing a localized supply chain for advanced packaging equipment is critical for keeping pace with customers’ increasingly shrinking time-to-market cycles for new artificial intelligence (AI) chips, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) said yesterday. Spurred on by the AI revolution, customers are accelerating product upgrades to nearly every year, compared with the two to three-year development cadence in the past, TSMC vice president of advanced packaging technology and service Jun He (何軍) said at a 3D IC Global Summit organized by SEMI in Taipei. These shortened cycles put heavy pressure on chipmakers, as the entire process — from chip design to mass
SEMICONDUCTOR SERVICES: A company executive said that Taiwanese firms must think about how to participate in global supply chains and lift their competitiveness Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said it expects to launch its first multifunctional service center in Pingtung County in the middle of 2027, in a bid to foster a resilient high-tech facility construction ecosystem. TSMC broached the idea of creating a center two or three years ago when it started building new manufacturing capacity in the US and Japan, the company said. The center, dubbed an “ecosystem park,” would assist local manufacturing facility construction partners to upgrade their capabilities and secure more deals from other global chipmakers such as Intel Corp, Micron Technology Inc and Infineon Technologies AG, TSMC said. It
RSS