As income growth continues to lag behind rising housing prices, an increasing number of people are pushing back the age at which they purchase their first home. That is because they must spend more time to earn enough money for a down payment. The average age for first-time home buyers was 30 to 35 in the first quarter of 2013, but for the same period this year it ranged from 35 to 40, Evertrust Rehouse said last week, citing data compiled by the Joint Credit Information Center.
The brokerage also said that the average price of a home purchased by people aged 35 to 40 in the first quarter of this year was NT$11.54 million (US$385,360), NT$4.13 million more than the NT$7.41 million that the same age group spent nine years earlier. However, the floor area of properties purchased by this age group had shrunk by 2.1 ping (6.94m2) to 43.6 ping on average this year, from 45.7 ping in 2013.
In addition, 22 percent of people taking out a mortgage in the first quarter of 2013 were aged 30 to 35, but in the first quarter of this year, primary mortgage takers were aged 35 to 40, accounting for 19 percent of the total, and those aged 50 and older, or 20 percent, the brokerage said, citing the center’s data.
People aged 50 and older have become the primary demographic taking new mortgages, the analysis shows. This phenomenon reflects that people aged 50 and older have sufficient wealth for property purchases, want to purchase properties given that homes are tangible assets that retain value amid global economic changes or choose to transfer some assets to real estate to hand down to their children.
Indeed, people aged 50 and older tend to have a stable income with a good credit record, so it is not unusual that they would become the main demographic taking out mortgages. However, an important takeaway from the data is that if real-estate prices continue to climb faster than wage growth, young adults would face more difficulty buying homes before the age of 35, and the average age for mortgage holders would also likely continue to grow. People who cannot save for a down payment early in life are having greater trouble affording homes, but even when borrowing money to buy a home, rising prices mean heavier mortgage burdens and lower affordability.
Unaffordable housing in Taiwan has been a top public grievance for many years, and the ratio of housing prices to family incomes confirms the trend of deteriorating affordability. Based on data released by the Ministry of the Interior early this month, Taiwanese home prices averaged 9.58 times household income in the first quarter of the year, the highest since the ministry began collecting such data in 2002. Meanwhile, mortgages accounted for 38.35 percent of household income in the first three months this year, up 0.52 percentage points from the previous quarter and 1.81 percentage points from a year earlier, the data showed.
Difficulty in purchasing a home is a crucial factor that keeps people from marrying, and deters young couples from having children, which then affects consumption, investment and production. The government must fulfill its promises to make housing more affordable, or this issue could have a deleterious effect on the nation’s economy and society, to the extent that it evolves into a national security issue.
On May 7, 1971, Henry Kissinger planned his first, ultra-secret mission to China and pondered whether it would be better to meet his Chinese interlocutors “in Pakistan where the Pakistanis would tape the meeting — or in China where the Chinese would do the taping.” After a flicker of thought, he decided to have the Chinese do all the tape recording, translating and transcribing. Fortuitously, historians have several thousand pages of verbatim texts of Dr. Kissinger’s negotiations with his Chinese counterparts. Paradoxically, behind the scenes, Chinese stenographers prepared verbatim English language typescripts faster than they could translate and type them
More than 30 years ago when I immigrated to the US, applied for citizenship and took the 100-question civics test, the one part of the naturalization process that left the deepest impression on me was one question on the N-400 form, which asked: “Have you ever been a member of, involved in or in any way associated with any communist or totalitarian party anywhere in the world?” Answering “yes” could lead to the rejection of your application. Some people might try their luck and lie, but if exposed, the consequences could be much worse — a person could be fined,
Xiaomi Corp founder Lei Jun (雷軍) on May 22 made a high-profile announcement, giving online viewers a sneak peek at the company’s first 3-nanometer mobile processor — the Xring O1 chip — and saying it is a breakthrough in China’s chip design history. Although Xiaomi might be capable of designing chips, it lacks the ability to manufacture them. No matter how beautifully planned the blueprints are, if they cannot be mass-produced, they are nothing more than drawings on paper. The truth is that China’s chipmaking efforts are still heavily reliant on the free world — particularly on Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing
Keelung Mayor George Hsieh (謝國樑) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) on Tuesday last week apologized over allegations that the former director of the city’s Civil Affairs Department had illegally accessed citizens’ data to assist the KMT in its campaign to recall Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) councilors. Given the public discontent with opposition lawmakers’ disruptive behavior in the legislature, passage of unconstitutional legislation and slashing of the central government’s budget, civic groups have launched a massive campaign to recall KMT lawmakers. The KMT has tried to fight back by initiating campaigns to recall DPP lawmakers, but the petition documents they
RSS