First-home buyer subsidy to boost house prices: poll
House prices could climb higher next quarter on improved buying interest induced by the government’s continued interest subsidy for first-home purchases, a survey by Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房屋) showed yesterday.
Fifty-two percent of respondents expect house prices to pick up during the second quarter of the year, a finding that is 12 percentage points higher than three months earlier, the largest realestate broker by number of offices told a news conference in Taipei.
The uptrend would come on top of an average 46.1 percent hike since the first quarter of 2020 when Evertrust teamed up with National Chengchi University to track real house price changes, Evertrust general manager Yeh Ling-chi (葉凌棋) said.
Yesterday marked the first time the university and Evertrust released their real house price index, which panel members said better captures housing market price movements than the government’s real price transaction platform.
Only 15 percent of respondents are expecting price corrections, as Taiwan is coming out of an economic slowdown, giving people less grounds for being pessimistic, Evertrust research manager Daniel Chen (陳賜傑) said.
Transaction data so far lent support to the positive views.
Housing transactions could total 81,000 to 85,000 units this quarter, suggesting a spike of up to 32 percent year-on-year, Chen said, adding that the government’s interest subsidy for first-home purchases has played a role in facilitating deals.
Exactly 50 percent of respondents said it is wise to buy a house this year, while 46 percent think it is time to sell, with house prices unlikely to boom or bust, Evertrust said.
House prices have soared more than 50 percent in major cities except Taipei, limiting the room for further growth, it said, adding that credit controls would also rein in prices.
However, rising land and building material prices mean that developers would likely not make price concessions, Evertrust said.
In the first half of this year, there could be 169,000 to 174,000 transactions, an increase of 22 to 25 percent, it said.
The property market would receive support from the favorable wealth effect linked to the TAIEX remaining above 20,000 points, while seeking to digest the central bank’s unexpected interest rate hike of 0.125 percentage points, it said.
The rate hike would not affect first-home purchases as the Ministry of Finance has expressed a willingness to absorb the extra borrowing costs, it added.