Taiwan’s property transactions in the first half of this year fell 26.4 percent year-on-year to about 130,000 units, as credit controls and mortgage restrictions dampened demand, data from the Ministry of the Interior showed yesterday.
Keelung saw the steepest decline, with transactions plummeting 45.6 percent to just 2,041 units — the lowest since the ministry began its survey in 2006. In contrast, Miaoli County was the only region to experience year-on-year growth, with transactions rising 2.4 percent to 3,229 units.
Great Home Realty Co (大家房屋) attributed the increase in deals in Miaoli, particularly Jhunan (竹南) and Toufen (頭份) townships, to spillover demand from neighboring Hsinchu City and Hsinchu County, where high prices have pushed some buyers to seek more affordable options further south.
Photo: Hsu Yi-ping, Taipei Times
“The tech-driven housing demand that has long supported Hsinchu is now facing a reversal,” Great Home Realty researcher Lai Chih-chang (賴志昶) said. “Even in areas with solid underlying demand, the market has entered a wait-and-see phase, with buyers turning cautious.”
Following significant price increases in Hsinchu properties over the past few years, sellers are still largely unwilling to lower asking prices or incur capital gains taxes, despite expectations of price corrections, Lai said. As a result, supply has sharply decreased, and activity has slowed in once bustling areas such as Hsinchu City and Hsinchu County.
While property sales weakened, transfers through inheritance and gifting continued to rise, reflecting a structural shift toward intergenerational wealth transfer in an aging society, Sinyi Realty Inc (信義房屋) said.
Inherited property transfers rose 5 percent to 39,000 units, while gifting transfers grew 4 percent to nearly 29,900 units in the first half of the year, the broker said.
“The rise in inheritance reflects Taiwan’s aging demographics,” Sinyi research manager Tseng Ching-der (曾敬德) said. “Gifting may also be tied to tax-saving strategies among spouses or family members.”
Meanwhile, court auction transfers fell 18 percent from a year earlier to 1,516 units, reflecting a low default rate and a limited supply of distressed assets, Tseng said.
The delinquency ratio on housing loans remains near historical lows, signaling continued financial stability despite the slump in conventional sales, he added.
NO BREAKTHROUGH? More substantial ‘deliverables,’ such as tariff reductions, would likely be saved for a meeting between Trump and Xi later this year, a trade expert said China launched two probes targeting the US semiconductor sector on Saturday ahead of talks between the two nations in Spain this week on trade, national security and the ownership of social media platform TikTok. China’s Ministry of Commerce announced an anti-dumping investigation into certain analog integrated circuits (ICs) imported from the US. The investigation is to target some commodity interface ICs and gate driver ICs, which are commonly made by US companies such as Texas Instruments Inc and ON Semiconductor Corp. The ministry also announced an anti-discrimination probe into US measures against China’s chip sector. US measures such as export curbs and tariffs
The US on Friday penalized two Chinese firms that acquired US chipmaking equipment for China’s top chipmaker, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯國際), including them among 32 entities that were added to the US Department of Commerce’s restricted trade list, a US government posting showed. Twenty-three of the 32 are in China. GMC Semiconductor Technology (Wuxi) Co (吉姆西半導體科技) and Jicun Semiconductor Technology (Shanghai) Co (吉存半導體科技) were placed on the list, formally known as the Entity List, for acquiring equipment for SMIC Northern Integrated Circuit Manufacturing (Beijing) Corp (中芯北方積體電路) and Semiconductor Manufacturing International (Beijing) Corp (中芯北京), the US Federal Register posting said. The
India’s ban of online money-based games could drive addicts to unregulated apps and offshore platforms that pose new financial and social risks, fantasy-sports gaming experts say. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government banned real-money online games late last month, citing financial losses and addiction, leading to a shutdown of many apps offering paid fantasy cricket, rummy and poker games. “Many will move to offshore platforms, because of the addictive nature — they will find alternate means to get that dopamine hit,” said Viren Hemrajani, a Mumbai-based fantasy cricket analyst. “It [also] leads to fraud and scams, because everything is now
MORTGAGE WORRIES: About 34% of respondents to a survey said they would approach multiple lenders to pay for a home, while 29.2% said they would ask family for help New housing projects in Taiwan’s six special municipalities, as well as Hsinchu city and county, are projected to total NT$710.65 billion (US$23.61 billion) in the upcoming fall sales season, a record 30 percent decrease from a year earlier, as tighter mortgage rules prompt developers to pull back, property listing platform 591.com (591新建案) said yesterday. The number of projects has also fallen to 312, a more than 20 percent decrease year-on-year, underscoring weakening sentiment and momentum amid lingering policy and financing headwinds. New Taipei City and Taoyuan bucked the downturn in project value, while Taipei, Hsinchu city and county, Taichung, Tainan and Kaohsiung
RSS