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.
Cairo’s new monorail slices across the city skyline, running above the familiar chaos of blaring horns and aging buses’ exhaust fumes that mark rush hour below. The US$4.5 billion monorail, opened this month, is among Egypt’s most prominent new transport projects, part of a debt-funded infrastructure drive criticized for sapping state finances while bringing limited benefits to most of the country’s 109 million people. “It feels like you’re in a different country,” said Ramy Sayed, a restaurant manager, aboard a driverless Innovia 300 train. “No noise, no traffic, we’re not used to this.” The eastern line runs 56km from the bustling middle-class
Taiwanese firms have increased investment in the Philippines in recent years as Manila’s ties with Washington deepen and global supply chains continue to shift away from China, an expert at the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. The Philippines had not been among Taiwanese investors’ top choices in Southeast Asia, CIER Taiwan ASEAN Studies Center director Kristy Hsu (徐遵慈) said at a seminar in Taipei. However, Taiwan’s investment in the country has grown significantly since the COVID-19 pandemic, reaching US $257 million last year, a high in recent years, she said. Although Taiwan’s total investment in the Philippines still lags
Intel Corp regards Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) as a longstanding partner, as the US chipmaker would continue outsourcing production of advanced chips to TSMC, Intel chief executive officer Lip-Bu Tan (陳立武) said yesterday. “I don’t look at people as competitors. I look at the collaboration... Nvidia is also, you know, a good friend,” Tan told a news conference following his keynote speech at the Computex trade show in Taipei. “It’s a very trusted partnership for us... We are a big, top customer for them, and we’re going to continue doing that,” he said, referring to TSMC, the world’s largest foundry
Artificial intelligence (AI) agents would supplant smartphones as the center of people’s digital lives, fundamentally reshaping personal devices and driving a major computing upgrade cycle, Qualcomm Inc CEO Cristiano Amon said yesterday. In his keynote speech for this year’s Computex trade show in Taipei, Amon said that the rise of "agentic AI" — AI systems capable of reasoning, planning and carrying out tasks autonomously — would transform how people interact with technology across phones, PCs, vehicles and wearable devices. Describing the technology as the next major evolution in computing, Amon said that "2026 is the year of agents.” For decades, smartphones have sat
RSS