Taiwan’s housing market is likely to remain under pressure for the remainder of the year, as property transactions plummeted more than 20 percent due to tighter credit conditions, increasing supply and ongoing economic uncertainty, according to a quarterly report released yesterday by Evertrust Rehouse Group (永慶房產集團).
Evertrust, the nation’s largest real-estate brokerage by office count, forecasts that total transactions would fall below 280,000 units for the year, with housing prices expected to continue their moderate decline, following a 1.6 percent drop in the second quarter, Evertrust general manager Yeh Ling-chi (葉凌棋) said.
“We’re not seeing a market crash, but there’s also no momentum for a rebound,” Yeh told a news conference in Taipei. “Consumers are adjusting to higher borrowing thresholds and the reality of more restrictive mortgage lending.”
Photo courtesy of Evertrust Rehouse Co
Transaction volume across Taiwan’s six special municipalities dropped 27.1 percent year-on-year from January to last month, Yeh said, citing government statistics.
Real-estate brokerages, including Evertrust, have experienced a decline in business by 40 to 60 percent compared with last year, he added.
While Taiwan’s resilient stock market and steady GDP growth have helped slow the pace of price corrections, these factors have also prolonged the adjustment period, Yeh said.
Presale home prices remain elevated in certain regions, buoyed by speculation that the government could ease credit restrictions, Yeh said.
However, such optimism faces headwinds, as a record 100,000 new housing units are slated for completion this year, stoking concerns over excess supply, particularly in central and southern Taiwan, he said.
Meanwhile, mortgage conditions are expected to remain tight. Banks are increasingly requiring stronger income documentation, particularly under the government’s New Youth Housing program, Yeh said.
Loan-to-value ratios now average at about 70 percent, and mortgage rates rarely fall below 2.5 percent, even at state-run lenders that dominate the market, he said.
More than half of transactions in Taiwan’s seven major metropolitan areas now involve price negotiations of 9 percent or more, a level not seen in six years. This growing gap between seller expectations and buyer capacity highlights the need for greater pricing flexibility, he added.
Yeh expects the market to continue following a pattern of “shrinking volume and moderate price correction.”
A sustained recovery in buying interest remains unlikely unless sellers become more willing to negotiate and adjust their asking prices, he added.
Elon Musk’s lieutenants have reached out to chip industry suppliers, including Applied Materials Inc, Tokyo Electron Ltd and Lam Research Corp, for his envisioned Terafab, early steps in an audacious and likely arduous attempt to break into the production of cutting-edge chips. Staff working for the joint venture between Tesla Inc and Space Exploration Technologies Corp (SpaceX) have sought price quotes and delivery times for an array of chipmaking gear, people familiar with the matter said. In past weeks, they’ve contacted makers of photomasks, substrates, etchers, depositors, cleaning devices, testers and other tools, according to the people, who asked not to
Taichung reported the steepest fall in completed home prices among the six special municipalities in the first quarter of this year, data compiled by Taiwan Realty Co (台灣房屋) showed yesterday. From January through last month, the average transaction price for completed homes in Taichung fell 8 percent from a year earlier to NT$299,000 (US$9,483) per ping (3.3m²), said Taiwan Realty, which compiled the data based on the government’s price registration platform. The decline could be attributed to many home buyers choosing relatively affordable used homes to live in themselves, instead of newly built homes in the city’s prime property market, Taiwan Realty
JET JUICE: The war on Iran’s secondary effects have seen fuel prices skyrocket, knocking flight schedules down to earth in return as airlines struggle with costs Airline passengers should brace for more irritation in the next few months as carriers worldwide cancel flights and ground planes to cope with stratospheric increases in jet-fuel prices. Dutch flag carrier KLM is the latest company to cut its schedule, saying on Thursday that it would scrap 80 return flights at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport in the coming month. That puts it in the same league as United Airlines Holdings Inc, Deutsche Lufthansa AG and Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd, which have all pruned itineraries to mitigate costs. Global capacity for next month has been reduced by about 3 percentage points, with all
Taiwan is attracting a growing number of foreign jobseekers as companies increasingly recruit overseas talent to ease labor shortages and expand global reach, recruitment platform 104 Job Bank (104人力銀行) said yesterday. More than 40,000 foreign nationals searched for jobs in Taiwan through the platform last year, a 28 percent increase from a year earlier, the company said. Malaysians accounted for the largest share of overseas jobseekers at 12.2 percent, followed by Indonesians at 11.9 percent and Vietnamese at 10.8 percent. Indonesian applicants surged more than 50 percent year-on-year, while Vietnamese jobseekers rose by more than 30 percent. Applicants from the
RSS