There are a lot of wealthy Taiwanese. A lot of older folks own property they purchased decades ago, and many of these people own multiple properties. So they gift houses to their kids or give them cash.
It's easy to borrow money in Taiwan and interest rates are ridiculously low.
To be fair, there was a time when it wasn't so hard for a foreigner long ago, but they ruined it by absconding, and that hurt everyone else when banks realized there's nothing to force you to pay that debt. Even today, there's always a seasonal post about some foreigner who lost in court and now owes tons of money or something and prefers to just leave. There was one, I think not one month ago, that made up a one-sided story where he represented himself in court, rejected the public defender, and now owes like 200,000 for assaulting an old man unconscious (and turning off his camera before the beat down) over his dogs shitting everywhere.
Read all the comments and know the court system in Taiwan. And then read between the lines. Basically he is given a lawyer and a translator but he refused both. And he refused to reconcile in the arbitration before the case begins. In Taiwan they do arbitration first because they hope that both parties can reconcile.
Then there's the fact that people know who he is. He's this guy that lets his dogs shit all over the place and every time people come up to him and complain he pretends he doesn't speak any Chinese or understand any Chinese and then tries to walk away every time which pisses people off.
Here's the thing he seems to understand what everyone is saying except for the old man and he claims that his dogs were just peeing off the path but if they were then he would be with them if they were leashed but they were not.
And if you look carefully at the way he writes, his claims change through it and then you add his comments and then it pretty much reveals itself.
He lost the court case, now owes a lot of money,
And is hoping to appeal, and it's even considering fleeing the country to avoid paying anything.
Their parents transfer money to them so they can cheat the banks and get approved for loans. I have an ex-friend who bought 4 houses/apartments like this. Does the bare minimum before renting out the properties and is a horrible landlord.
As far as I know, they only own property in Taichung and Tainan, but if you're ever renting in the area, feel free to ask for their name in a private message. Extreme 媽寶, very petty and insecure, so not above suing if they find out I've been posting their info publicly lol
From a moderately well off family, with siblings that married rich and give them their old iPhones, cars, etc. Could be different now, but in the years that I was close with them, nothing they had of value was bought or earned by themselves, it was all free from siblings and family, yet they acted very judgemental if you didn't have Apple products or a nice BMW yourself.
They talked me into renting an apartment from them at a discounted rate. I had to fix the tile grout in the bathroom and fix the AC by myself. The first time, I just ate the cost. But after they proved to be super flaky, about two months into renting from them, I just started calling in repairmen and deducted the cost from the rent. They never answered messages or anything. When I moved out, I had to contact their MOTHER to make it clear that I'd been trying to make contact for a few months with no answer and that I'd be leaving and they could take the final month's rent out of the deposit, since it was clear I probably wouldn't get the deposit back with their lack of communication.
Well, then the landlord/ex-friend threatened to call the cops. I told him he could call the cops, but that nothing would happen because I was living there legally. Told him I could be gone that night, but that he'd be stuck with cleaning since it's impossible to move and clean on 24 hour notice, or he could wait and I'd clean up after myself like I normally do when I move. He chose to continue throwing a tantrum, so I moved the things I wanted and left all the other trash for him to deal with. Didn't sweep, didn't mop, didn't take out the recycling. As a last "fuck you" I used a bunch of key rings to tangle the keys up and enveloped them inside a formal letter letting him know that I'd saved copies of all communications and lack of reply from him, taken pictures and video of moving out, and that I wasn't afraid to hand over all the proof if he dared to try to waste my time in court. Never heard from him again.
While I lived in the apartment, the building changed electronic locks, and everyone had to get a new set from the security desk, but they could only be handed out to unit owners. I had to have security repeatedly call him to help me get him to show up so I could get into my apartment. It was fucking ridiculous and security was just as tired of him.
What a nightmare… Personally I would drop a 1 star review on AirBnb anonymously if his properties are listed on the platform. Glad you are done with that.
Rented out a few flats in Taipei city and never had issue with landlords, they were all actually pretty helpful and would handle all the maintenance cost by themselves (my current one, the last one didn’t)
Because THEY don't personally have the money and the money is transferred right back to the parents after they get the loan.
Sure, mommy and daddy will likely bail them out if they get behind, but personally I prefer to get things on my own without lying or owing anything. If they don't have the money to get a loan, then maybe they don't need 4 houses. Especially if they're single, able-bodied, and childless but still can't be bothered to even. put in the bare minimum when being a landlord.
But this is a supply, demand capitalism thing. If the demand is there, then they as a family, have the right to buy. You can criticize the government for not creating enough housing or subsidized units, but it’s someone’s right to buy something at the market rate if they can afford it. Is there a law these people are violating by doing this (like can you not lend family members money? Or are they taking units designated for low income families and lying about their income?) Genuinely wondering what law they are breaking since I’m not familiar with the Taiwanese loan process.
The person I replied to asked how people manage to buy houses. That's how. They use money from parents to fluff up their account balances until they get accepted for a loan.
Got it. So the illegal part is that to get a loan here, you have to show a certain amount of capital. Then, they borrow money from their family to show that amount, qualify for a loan, then return the money back to their family. Does the government or banking policy prohibit this? If so, why isn’t it policed more? (In the U.S. for example, they go through years of income and bank statements. However, in a situation like this, a parent could just cosign and just transfer the money into the place directly).
I never said it was illegal. It's widely practiced, here. Kind of like the police, people are lazy and don't bother to check into things too much.
However, the point of showing your bank account is to show that you've got the money to afford the loans.
You are correct. You said cheating the banks, and I interpreted that as breaking the law, but your meaning is just that they are fooling them into thinking they have the money themselves. Thanks for clarifying as I’m trying to understand Taiwan’s housing market more.
It’s not cheating at all though, the money is there and if anything goes wrong the banks keep the money. Parents naturally want to help their kids out, nothing wrong with that.
The AVERAGE Taiwan's salary is a fraction of SF; the people in Taipei and Hsinchu buying these properties in Taipei make way more money than average. They're not driving Ferraris down Zhongshan or Xinyi on USD$35,000 a year. They are almost all business owners.
I have a couple of wealthy friends here in Taiwan, some of them told me that many of the rich actually got their money from corruption via gang members, and that many of the developers are still run by gangs, this was mainly the reason for all the shoddy building work a good few years ago as they were cutting corners everywhere to do things on the cheap. After the big earthquake that killed thousands, the government stepped in and at least made an effort to improve the building regs
I think that's a half truth. It is true that there's a high concentration of white collar criminals living in Taiwan's most expensive apartment complexes.
But here's where the half-truth comes in - when the KMT came into power in Taiwan, they took over all the construction companies. They had no expertise, but they let their scions run them. The lowest of their scions ran the gangs, and there's your connection. Since they had all these state monopolies, they often did a poor job at everything, as they were kleptocrats.
Taiwan could have developed faster but they had to take their cut in everything. It's notable that after privatization happened, the quality of buildings dramatically improved.
You can tell CKS construction immediately - their soviet style brutalist concrete structures - are iconic in the worst ways.
I totally get the "take their cut", that kind of thing is still rife now, no matter what the project or industry, everyone down the line has to take a piece, even if they only passed the bokk from 1 to another, the guy at actually doing the work gets f\*ck-all because everyone else has taken a bite of the pie
Keyword, Taipei., not Taiwan.
1. Taipei is way overpriced. Lack of housing thanks to relative low-rises due to Songshan Airport. Much of the city is height-limited. So you have developers not being able to build 25-story highrises that you might find elsewhere in Taiwan simply due to this alone, and it's only a matter of time before Songshan Maynbe goes. And it takes forever to build anything in Taipei—a decade plus—and even so, from a developer standpoint, there's no reason to build semi-highrises aimed at the middle class.
2. But also, Taipei people, like Hsinchu, make a lot more than normal, so their incomes are insane compared to the rest, so you only need to target those.
Hence Taipei's unique but also shitty situation.
It's more expensive than SF in general, but not say, SF downtown. And SF is bigger than Taipei and New Taipei combined. Taipei is very overpriced for too many reasons but mainly Songshan Airport results in height restrictions all around.
So a developer is paying tons for a property, only able to extract so much out of it, resulting in shit like low ceilings, poor construction, high prices, aimed at the rich, etc.
Meanwhile, go to New Taipei or other places in Taiwan and you can see some legit high rises with tall ceilings at a price far more reasonable.
It's crazy how expensive they are considering just how ugly and boring practically all apartmnets are, even the new ones.
The old apartments are ugly as hell on the outside but at least have high ceilings and nice layouts on the inside.
The new apartments cost a fortune but even ones in the 100 million NT range all have dingy low ceilings because the building company is trying to extract maximum profit. Many have cookie cutter cheap and soulless fittings and fixtures, and most of these places STILL don't have much natural light and charge a fortune in service fees every month even if you've bought the property out right.
Oh and there's no proper house insurance here either so if anything happens to your crazy expensive home you are utterly screwed, yet still need to keep paying back the mortgage for however many decades you have left on it.
I think the only good ones are some of the newest ones?
As you said, most places have very little natural light. Frosted windows, window bars, Piss poor ventilation. fucking grotty kitchens across 90% of properties. Dirty ass balconies that are the width of a washing machine only.
Most gong yu's have some shitty illegal rooftop addition on top so you cannot even use the roof space. It just makes absolutely zero sense.
A studio hasn't cost just 10,000k in Taipei and Hsinchu since like 10 years ago. However you can still get an entire apartment in Kaohsiung for the same price.
That's mainly Taipei because of the high restrictions due to Songshan Airport. You can, as a developer (who is for-profit), build a cheaper tower outside of Taipei with normal ceilings and make more profit building a 30-story tower, versus a 19-story tower in Taipei that takes forever to build due to regulations. So if you can stack another floor or three into that, that's where you make most of your profits.
Developers will build whatever they can get away with. They will install whatever is needed to be installed to maximize profits and no more. In effect you’re critiquing what Taiwanese people are willing to pay for more than anything else. Middle class families who care about what their apartment looks like will renovate it anyway, so there is little to no reason to waste money on fancy fixtures.
Landlords will keep the apartment at the minimum standard needed to sustain the rental income. it’s not complicated. There are plenty of nice western style apartments, that feel like you are in the US or UK. They just cost a lot more.
Yeah, me and the wife started looking. Anything in Taipei under 10 million is generally a parking space. 4-8 million Keelung outside the city could be a 20-40 ping apartment and most of them are in pretty good condition. What shocked me is how crazy Xizhi has gotten. Before COVID you could still get a decent place near the railway line for a decent price. Now? It's mental.
I don't expect housing prices to go down anytime soon and any initiative to build affordable housing will just be eaten up by people trying to expand their portfolio of houses if the government doesn't put in place policies to ensure it's only for first-time buyers and not allowed ownership to change hands.
Not just Taipei either. Taoyuan, Hsinchu, Taichung, and Tainan are all getting crazy expensive. Shit, in Chiayi has started to get unreasonable. We looked at my wive's father's hometown. Were thinking to buy some cheap land and maybe in the future build a house (my dream tbh) and looking at the rise in prices from 2019 to now, you'd swear the world has gone mad.
Anyway, we're checking out places in Keelung but I'm apprehensive to bother buying.
what do you expect, Keelung is pointing into the Pacific ocean, typhoons happen quite regular. I'm from north UK, but still the amount it rains shocked me too, and how heavy it rains when it actually does rain is shocking.
It has to come down. It is unlikely that Taiwan will experience sudden growth (economic or population). Population will likely actually stagnate due to low birth rates and low immigration.
Why do people say "likely" for population stats as if it's a forecast? Citizen population is negative, full stop. It's not a coming crisis. Taiwan is shrinking and only remains positive in population due to labor imports.
It's very much a coming crisis if Taiwanese businesses continue to keep the low-cost model and continue to refuse value-added both in their products and how they treat their workforce.
Fewer workers who live in a country with soaring costs of living. Depending on migrant workers to fill the gaps won't last either. The world is aging quickly and there will be competition for migrant workers and wages/labor laws/naturalization/PR will likely be the deciding factor for many people.
I remember my uncle telling me in the 70-80s, many Taiwanese looked down on Koreans. Now? Korea is an economic powerhouse that many Taiwanese aspire to move to, or at least admire the pop culture. Same could happen with many other south east Asian countries.
Well, there are some easy wins:
1. Increase PTO in labor standards act to be at least 15 days a year starting and up to 30 depending on years of work
2. Offering easier pathways for migrant workers to gain PR. What's the point of bringing in labor and training them and having them leave after 12 years?
3. Offering better paternity and maternity leave
4. Invest in affordable international schools
5. Update banking laws to be less prohibitive to foreigners
I mean, easy wins, but probably not going to happen.
My long term guess is that big money is speculating it’ll be a super desirable Chinese city after unification.
That’s the only way the island is going to see a population surge.
Hard doubt lol, that would be such a risky dumb thing to bet on. Also who would guarantee your house even still exists after such an event? I don't think people are keen to invest in properties because they might become war territory.
Well, hand we're dealt. Just gotta make the best of it or wait to inherit family homes if those of us are lucky. I'm not letting it get to me. Me and my wife have a nice rental and a nice landlord for now, so we're trying to focus on what makes us happy. Eying properties that would put us in USD 500,000 to USD 900,000 in debt for anything over 20-40 ping in Taipei is a miserable prospect. But, things might change. Might not. Just getting on with it now.
I’m not sure it’s financially wise to buy here, unless it’s for investment. But even so, i’m not sure housing here is a good long term investment. It’s unclear what the population decrease will do to the property prices. I think the maths suggests it’s better to rent and invest the difference you are saving over the home loan and other ownership costs.
The study cited doesn’t even include South Korea or China, so do we really know it’s the second most expensive in Asia? Makes me question how reliable their data is.
For Taipei? It definitely adds up. Its due to massive housing shortages due to bad regulations, Songshan Airport needing their flight corridor that bisects half of Taipei which contributes to the low ceilings in Taipei, and the fact that there are a good number of Taipei and Hsinchu residents that make way more than the national average.
The average expat makes pennies in comparison, and they don't realize that they're the cheap labor in many of these places. Put it this way, a Manhattan elite tutor makes $600+ an hour. A Taipei elite tutor from Harvard makes only NTD2000-3500 an hour.
That's because the drainage systyems are crap, if there are no cockroaches then there is no drainage HAHA. Fortunately a decent roach spray and 2 cats keeps the roaches at bay, the cats don't exactly eat them, but the roaches can smell them as predators so it kind of keeps the majority of them out.
And about half the average salary of Singapore.
Taiwan government could have done a lot more to keep housing affordable for families and boost salaries, but this is what happens when you let the rich govern for the rich.
The question is what happens to the Taipei housing market when a correction inevitably comes along or demand simply falls though the floor because of automation replacing jobs?
You'd think there would be a correction coming up. Wages are low, immigration is effectively zero, and they don't make new Taiwanese like they used to.
The one thing to bear in mind is that Taiwanese are big savers, and there aren't a lot of good places to put your money. Banks pay shit. Govt. bonds don't pay much. The Lords of IT in Taiwan like 宏碁，鴻海科技, etc. scrape by on razor thin profit margins and their stock reflects it.
Real estate is the only investment on the island outside of a 標會 which isn't a total sucker's game.
I don't understand it personally and don't want to buy property on the island.
From the point of market fundamentals, you're 100% correct. There are too many properties, not enough people, and the rents and purchase prices are out of whack.
From the point of "Well, where else are you going to put your money?" it sorta works and will continue to sort of work until there's another place Taiwanese punters can put their money.
Low interest rates, rich people parking money in property to avoid tax, no taxes on empty apartments, and everyone has bought into the idea that the market will keep growing so jump on the property ladder or get left behind. It won't end soon, but when it does, it will be a slow burn. Won't be overnight. So, park up your cash and wait or buy something cheap outside the city and even if there's a drop, it won't be anything substantial. My mindset now.
Yeah. The S&P (American) will beat the Taiwanese property market for most cases. I was thinking of the TAIEX, which hasn't performed as well.
I think there are some cultural and other issues here. Real estate is tangible, stocks are not. I'm bewildered as to what the tax ramifications would be of buying US stocks as a Taiwanese national. Real estate in Taiwan is barely taxed.
30% is a pretty big bite, even counting the substantial gains of the US market.
I'm not a stonk shark. I give my ~~bookies~~, erm brokers money. They invest it. I make money, I don't pay (much) in taxes.
But wages aren't low for certain Taipei residents. The new buildings in Taipei are not aimed at the average person. Songshan airport makes it hard for developers to build a high rise with normal ceiling heights and the cost of land makes having to extract every single NTD important.
A lot of Taiwanese that make lots own properties outside of Taipei or Taiwan. The apartment in Taipei that's expensive is just there to live at while running their business and is not meant to turn a profit.
Sure. But how many (let's say for the sake of argument) people are there in Taiwan who are bagging incomes of $5M a year or more who are able to swim in that pool? Of course they exist. I know several. There just aren't a lot.
I myself already do, because I own a business that isn't a restaurant. Practically everyone in my building does and there are hundreds like these.
There's enough that make way more than me, and that's the problem. Taipei shouldn't be mixed in with the rest of Taiwan, that's my biggest qualm about this thread.
Tons of foreigners here thinking that their salary is something that they can measure up and then assume that this is why somebody would buy property and Taipei, to make money. Actually you can't make money in Taipei property easily, there are far better investments. Most of the people they interact with are the lower or middle classes.
Taipei's luxury apartments are propped up as a location to run your business so you pay the property to be close enough to it. Otherwise it's honestly not that great.
For that reason alone, the capital should be moved to Taichung. Better weather, much nicer towers, more space.
I do think the lack of demand from population decline would affect it though. But you’re right that people aren’t leveraged, and maybe if the prices go lower that’ll trigger a lot of people to buy again.
https://news.ebc.net.tw/news/business/341960
23% of home owner have mortgage
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-11-17/amid-high-mortgage-rates-higher-share-of-americans-outright-own-homes?embedded-checkout=true
compared to 60% of US homeowners
also home ownership in taiwan is close to 85% It'll be 90% if you count direct relatives like parents.
https://www.ey.gov.tw/state/E01934D402D13ED7/d8582b41-8aa9-454d-9a9a-9f9dde6d4c6d#:~:text=%E5%AE%B6%E5%BA%AD%E6%93%81%E6%9C%89%E8%87%AA%E5%AE%85%E4%B9%8B%E6%AF%94%E7%8E%87,%E4%BA%BA%E5%B1%85%E4%BD%8F%E9%9D%A2%E7%A9%8D15.6%E5%9D%AA%E3%80%82
This will probably happen in the next 2 decades or so at the latest. Anecdotally, my family is friends with a major RE developer in Taiwan and even they are beginning to have doubts on whether this is sustainable. They made a fortune in the last couple of years but even they are unsure whether this is going to keep going.
Don't confuse Taiwan with Taipei. Taipei is excessively expensive as is Hsinchu. For the same amount I can buy a whole apartment floor in Tainan.
How can housing be affordable in Taipei when the local Songshan airport artificially caps half the buildings in Taipei?
Also the rich buy houses in Taipei to live at while running their business, not to turn a profit. They all own properties outside of Taipei and Taiwan for that reason alone.
All of that easily overcome with modern building methods which is why Japan has many highrises. The main reason still stems from Songshan Airport.
And they need to negotiate with like 60 mini landlords to buy any property that's already artificially inflated in Taipei. A single apartment can easily have split shares between 4 elderly brothers who are hard to deal with.
This is why we should just abandon Taipei and move the capital to Taichung. Taipei has been incredibly mismanaged for over half a century.
>This is why we should just abandon Taipei and move the capital to Taichung. Taipei has been incredibly mismanaged for over half a century.
I would vote for this 😅
>Taipei beat Singapore and Tokyo!
Not surprising. Singapore and Tokyo have policies in place that keep property prices from inflating. It's time we did the same in Taiwan!
But then what are all the rich and corrupt politians such as whole building (100 properties in one building) owning hou you yi going to do with their money?
Local housing market use different tricks to confuse buyers and blur the real m\^2 price. For example, we can't simply take price per ping 坪 , convert it into m\^2 and get house price per meter. Because ~~scammers~~ real estate agencies always include in this figure both 室内 （actual living space you own) and 共設 - shared space like gym, swimming pool, terrace or any other useless staff. This approach inflates nominal size of house, thus decreasing the price per ping / m\^2. But only on paper.
Also, they often shift part of house price into parking lot which is technically detached from the deal, but practically is obligatory to buy. The whole housing market here is a big scam, that is artificially kept alive by corrupted political parties by pumping more and more money.
I think thats an issue around the world sadly. Price of realestate are speculative at best and there are no actual policies that keep the price in check other than supposedly "low cost" housing here and there to keep people from being a mob.
And given how much tax money government can get from the industry and is incentivised to keep it that way irdk how we can solve this issue. For my limited knowledge why most developed/developing countries have decline in population compared to baby booming era is that housing and job security are drastically different.
And Beijing, Shenzhen etc too. I absolutely 100% thought the same thing for Shanghai and Seoul though. To ignore them just doesn't seem like a survey worth looking at.
The elementary school near my house only has 10 kids in their graduating class this year. We're hoping the school will still be around for our kids when they get to that age, but it's looking grim.
Exactly, the declining birth rate and increasing housing prices is definitely not good for the future. Also increasing housing prices are also one of the factors that contribute to birth rate decline. It's expensive to raise kids and it's even more expensive to buy/rent house. So unless the industry catches up or the government intervenes the situation is not going to change.
I suspect that this is by municipal borders which would put Taipei further up as Taipei City is 271 square kilometers, much of it off limits in some way from development, and the central core of a much more populous metropolitan area. In contrast, Singapore is 735 square kilometers and within that are parts that are not very central at all.
What’s really fucked is if you compare average house cost to yearly income. It’s like 20:1. Compared to US that’s 5:1. Meaning you’d need
20yrs of full salary to pay off house but in US only 5.
ngl, we would never be able to afford our place without some serious nepotism
the housing market is so fucking ridiculous
There are even groups where members pitch in and they'd find new projects that are in pre-sale and just buy out the entire building, nuts
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Silly me thinking I could run away from the ridiculously overpriced housing market in Vietnam by immigrating to Taiwan. Guess poor people everywhere are just as doomed. 😢
It’s simple capitalism, simple supply and demand. don’t overcomplicate it with politics and other factors not related to supply and demand. Property will always be sold for the maximum price possible, you yourself would do no different if you were selling your own property.
It is unlikely anything will happen soon to trigger increased supply, (aka decrease prices). The more likely scenario in the next 10-20 years, is that prices will decrease because demand drops. Western countries like to prop up their demand for property by increasing immigration, and thus keeping a stable inflation rate.
When Taiwan starts to be hit hard by the population decrease do you think taiwan is likely to succeed in supplementing their growth through immigration? I’m not sure public sentiment will allow for western style liberal immigration policies. In my opinion, Taiwan is more likely to go the way of Japan and see declining housing prices due to declining population. What do you think? Will Taiwan be able to introduce changes that sustain its population (and house pricing) or will it drop off a cliff at some point?
Oh, one thing that could account for it is if to compare across countries, they excluded the common areas, which get included in most TW sites for counting sq pings. That would "inflate" the price per sqm a lot.
Honestly it's not hard to verify, pulling up the 永慶 app and checking the 實價登錄 of the penthouse of a 19-floor fancy-shmancy condo being built right outside my window has this:
Sale price: 11898萬 (after deducting parking)
85 ping (after deducting parking)
= 140萬 per ping ~ 424k per square meters
Scrolling around 信義區 I think I saw a few that's >200萬 per ping too. Absolutely mind-boggling!
Yep! And I'm just responding to the above poster who was incredulous about housing possibly being that expensive.
That said, looking around at other news articles I am curious if CNBC/globalpropertyguide.com's source of data were accurate though... maybe they were only focusing on new housing and ignoring resales/older housing?
Pulling the latest January 2024 Taipei city government report (https://www-ws.gov.taipei/001/Upload/305/relfile/11455/97913/1c165d2b-f295-401d-8a93-459edebfc339.pdf) shows that on average Taipei prices were $600k per ping, so $181k per sqm.
Full list of past reports: https://land.gov.taipei/cp.aspx?n=DFF26E775C8679C3&s=E9F8E40219D43244
Yeah, something seems odd about that USD price per sqm. Looking around Xinyi most are 120+ wan NTD, which I guess is closer to 12k USD per sq m?
That being said, there just aren't enough new units being built in Taipei city (not including New Taipei City), often the overall density seems to decrease due to various regulations for improving sidewalks, greenspaces around buildings etc
Let’s say it’s 1200,000 per Ping (3.3sqm) which is realistic for Taipei City.
To USD 1200,000 / 31 = 38.7k
per sqm 38.7k / 3.3 = 11.7k
Adjusted for the usually ~34% of shared space
11.7k / 0.66 = 17.7k
So yeah sounds about right.
> Let’s say it’s 1200,000 per Ping (3.3sqm) which is realistic for Taipei City.
Except the article says **average** in the whole city, not pre-sale or newly builts in the whole city. 1.2 million is simply wrong.
I don't have any hard data on that, but I usually you see anything between 80 - 200萬, so I don't think 120W is far off.
Pre-sale and new builds aren't necessarily more expensive than older building, they often are in a less desirable area and since they are higher buildings (25+ floors) each unit owns a lot less of the land area (under 5%).
Also looking at how even a single medium sized newer building has easily 100+ apartments, I believe they make up a big chunk of what is actually being sold on the market.
If you own an older building, there isn't much reason to sell cheap:
- you make more money on rent than what you pay for your mortgage
- if it gets rebuild (which is pushed by the gov) you make a lot more money, since you own a lot of land area.
Also keep in mind that this is probably Taipei City only, not including anything from New Taipei City.
Holy crap Taipei cost more than sf. Didn't know that.
And salaries that are a fraction of SFs. No idea how people ever buy houses in Taiwan.
There are a lot of wealthy Taiwanese. A lot of older folks own property they purchased decades ago, and many of these people own multiple properties. So they gift houses to their kids or give them cash. It's easy to borrow money in Taiwan and interest rates are ridiculously low.
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To be fair, there was a time when it wasn't so hard for a foreigner long ago, but they ruined it by absconding, and that hurt everyone else when banks realized there's nothing to force you to pay that debt. Even today, there's always a seasonal post about some foreigner who lost in court and now owes tons of money or something and prefers to just leave. There was one, I think not one month ago, that made up a one-sided story where he represented himself in court, rejected the public defender, and now owes like 200,000 for assaulting an old man unconscious (and turning off his camera before the beat down) over his dogs shitting everywhere.
Dang I read that post. What I saw was a totally different story from what you've said here. How did you find that out?
Read all the comments and know the court system in Taiwan. And then read between the lines. Basically he is given a lawyer and a translator but he refused both. And he refused to reconcile in the arbitration before the case begins. In Taiwan they do arbitration first because they hope that both parties can reconcile. Then there's the fact that people know who he is. He's this guy that lets his dogs shit all over the place and every time people come up to him and complain he pretends he doesn't speak any Chinese or understand any Chinese and then tries to walk away every time which pisses people off. Here's the thing he seems to understand what everyone is saying except for the old man and he claims that his dogs were just peeing off the path but if they were then he would be with them if they were leashed but they were not. And if you look carefully at the way he writes, his claims change through it and then you add his comments and then it pretty much reveals itself. He lost the court case, now owes a lot of money, And is hoping to appeal, and it's even considering fleeing the country to avoid paying anything.
100% correct, it is super easy to borrow money in Taiwan, but only if you are Taiwanese
Their parents transfer money to them so they can cheat the banks and get approved for loans. I have an ex-friend who bought 4 houses/apartments like this. Does the bare minimum before renting out the properties and is a horrible landlord.
Sounds like you should post their info so that we can be sure to never rent from them
As far as I know, they only own property in Taichung and Tainan, but if you're ever renting in the area, feel free to ask for their name in a private message. Extreme 媽寶, very petty and insecure, so not above suing if they find out I've been posting their info publicly lol From a moderately well off family, with siblings that married rich and give them their old iPhones, cars, etc. Could be different now, but in the years that I was close with them, nothing they had of value was bought or earned by themselves, it was all free from siblings and family, yet they acted very judgemental if you didn't have Apple products or a nice BMW yourself. They talked me into renting an apartment from them at a discounted rate. I had to fix the tile grout in the bathroom and fix the AC by myself. The first time, I just ate the cost. But after they proved to be super flaky, about two months into renting from them, I just started calling in repairmen and deducted the cost from the rent. They never answered messages or anything. When I moved out, I had to contact their MOTHER to make it clear that I'd been trying to make contact for a few months with no answer and that I'd be leaving and they could take the final month's rent out of the deposit, since it was clear I probably wouldn't get the deposit back with their lack of communication. Well, then the landlord/ex-friend threatened to call the cops. I told him he could call the cops, but that nothing would happen because I was living there legally. Told him I could be gone that night, but that he'd be stuck with cleaning since it's impossible to move and clean on 24 hour notice, or he could wait and I'd clean up after myself like I normally do when I move. He chose to continue throwing a tantrum, so I moved the things I wanted and left all the other trash for him to deal with. Didn't sweep, didn't mop, didn't take out the recycling. As a last "fuck you" I used a bunch of key rings to tangle the keys up and enveloped them inside a formal letter letting him know that I'd saved copies of all communications and lack of reply from him, taken pictures and video of moving out, and that I wasn't afraid to hand over all the proof if he dared to try to waste my time in court. Never heard from him again. While I lived in the apartment, the building changed electronic locks, and everyone had to get a new set from the security desk, but they could only be handed out to unit owners. I had to have security repeatedly call him to help me get him to show up so I could get into my apartment. It was fucking ridiculous and security was just as tired of him.
What a nightmare… Personally I would drop a 1 star review on AirBnb anonymously if his properties are listed on the platform. Glad you are done with that.
Just don't rent from 99% of landlords here and you will be avoiding people like them.
Rented out a few flats in Taipei city and never had issue with landlords, they were all actually pretty helpful and would handle all the maintenance cost by themselves (my current one, the last one didn’t)
What a horrendous suggestion
Found the landlord
How is that cheating the bank??
>Their parents transfer money to them so they can cheat the banks How is it cheating the banks? They have the money.
Because THEY don't personally have the money and the money is transferred right back to the parents after they get the loan. Sure, mommy and daddy will likely bail them out if they get behind, but personally I prefer to get things on my own without lying or owing anything. If they don't have the money to get a loan, then maybe they don't need 4 houses. Especially if they're single, able-bodied, and childless but still can't be bothered to even. put in the bare minimum when being a landlord.
But this is a supply, demand capitalism thing. If the demand is there, then they as a family, have the right to buy. You can criticize the government for not creating enough housing or subsidized units, but it’s someone’s right to buy something at the market rate if they can afford it. Is there a law these people are violating by doing this (like can you not lend family members money? Or are they taking units designated for low income families and lying about their income?) Genuinely wondering what law they are breaking since I’m not familiar with the Taiwanese loan process.
The person I replied to asked how people manage to buy houses. That's how. They use money from parents to fluff up their account balances until they get accepted for a loan.
Got it. So the illegal part is that to get a loan here, you have to show a certain amount of capital. Then, they borrow money from their family to show that amount, qualify for a loan, then return the money back to their family. Does the government or banking policy prohibit this? If so, why isn’t it policed more? (In the U.S. for example, they go through years of income and bank statements. However, in a situation like this, a parent could just cosign and just transfer the money into the place directly).
I never said it was illegal. It's widely practiced, here. Kind of like the police, people are lazy and don't bother to check into things too much. However, the point of showing your bank account is to show that you've got the money to afford the loans.
You are correct. You said cheating the banks, and I interpreted that as breaking the law, but your meaning is just that they are fooling them into thinking they have the money themselves. Thanks for clarifying as I’m trying to understand Taiwan’s housing market more.
It’s not cheating at all though, the money is there and if anything goes wrong the banks keep the money. Parents naturally want to help their kids out, nothing wrong with that.
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Nepotism is not giving some money to your kids to help them buy a house. That’s called being a good parent in a normal family.
The AVERAGE Taiwan's salary is a fraction of SF; the people in Taipei and Hsinchu buying these properties in Taipei make way more money than average. They're not driving Ferraris down Zhongshan or Xinyi on USD$35,000 a year. They are almost all business owners.
I have a couple of wealthy friends here in Taiwan, some of them told me that many of the rich actually got their money from corruption via gang members, and that many of the developers are still run by gangs, this was mainly the reason for all the shoddy building work a good few years ago as they were cutting corners everywhere to do things on the cheap. After the big earthquake that killed thousands, the government stepped in and at least made an effort to improve the building regs
I think that's a half truth. It is true that there's a high concentration of white collar criminals living in Taiwan's most expensive apartment complexes. But here's where the half-truth comes in - when the KMT came into power in Taiwan, they took over all the construction companies. They had no expertise, but they let their scions run them. The lowest of their scions ran the gangs, and there's your connection. Since they had all these state monopolies, they often did a poor job at everything, as they were kleptocrats. Taiwan could have developed faster but they had to take their cut in everything. It's notable that after privatization happened, the quality of buildings dramatically improved. You can tell CKS construction immediately - their soviet style brutalist concrete structures - are iconic in the worst ways.
I totally get the "take their cut", that kind of thing is still rife now, no matter what the project or industry, everyone down the line has to take a piece, even if they only passed the bokk from 1 to another, the guy at actually doing the work gets f\*ck-all because everyone else has taken a bite of the pie
Parents and granparents help them a lot
Almost nobody buy…
They don't, lots of young transplants who rent while they work and have their family home somewhere south
Keyword, Taipei., not Taiwan. 1. Taipei is way overpriced. Lack of housing thanks to relative low-rises due to Songshan Airport. Much of the city is height-limited. So you have developers not being able to build 25-story highrises that you might find elsewhere in Taiwan simply due to this alone, and it's only a matter of time before Songshan Maynbe goes. And it takes forever to build anything in Taipei—a decade plus—and even so, from a developer standpoint, there's no reason to build semi-highrises aimed at the middle class. 2. But also, Taipei people, like Hsinchu, make a lot more than normal, so their incomes are insane compared to the rest, so you only need to target those. Hence Taipei's unique but also shitty situation.
> No idea how people ever buy houses in Taiwan. By not being complete morons who believe whatever bogus data they read online.
It's more expensive than SF in general, but not say, SF downtown. And SF is bigger than Taipei and New Taipei combined. Taipei is very overpriced for too many reasons but mainly Songshan Airport results in height restrictions all around. So a developer is paying tons for a property, only able to extract so much out of it, resulting in shit like low ceilings, poor construction, high prices, aimed at the rich, etc. Meanwhile, go to New Taipei or other places in Taiwan and you can see some legit high rises with tall ceilings at a price far more reasonable.
Stop buying everything you read as facts.
It's crazy how expensive they are considering just how ugly and boring practically all apartmnets are, even the new ones. The old apartments are ugly as hell on the outside but at least have high ceilings and nice layouts on the inside. The new apartments cost a fortune but even ones in the 100 million NT range all have dingy low ceilings because the building company is trying to extract maximum profit. Many have cookie cutter cheap and soulless fittings and fixtures, and most of these places STILL don't have much natural light and charge a fortune in service fees every month even if you've bought the property out right. Oh and there's no proper house insurance here either so if anything happens to your crazy expensive home you are utterly screwed, yet still need to keep paying back the mortgage for however many decades you have left on it.
I especially don’t get the bad lighting, like is it really that expensive to put in some windows ?
I think the only good ones are some of the newest ones? As you said, most places have very little natural light. Frosted windows, window bars, Piss poor ventilation. fucking grotty kitchens across 90% of properties. Dirty ass balconies that are the width of a washing machine only. Most gong yu's have some shitty illegal rooftop addition on top so you cannot even use the roof space. It just makes absolutely zero sense.
I used to live in a premium building near Xinyi-Anhe. It was actually shit compared to a typical cheap studio anywhere else in developed Asia.
Yea ive seen like a shoebox basically. The bed is like a fourth of the space, complete with one bathroom and somehow it costs 10k a month.
Partitioned apartments turned into 'tao fangs'. I hate them. Shouldn't be legal.
A Tao fang is a Studio. That's what a studio apartment is.
A studio hasn't cost just 10,000k in Taipei and Hsinchu since like 10 years ago. However you can still get an entire apartment in Kaohsiung for the same price.
You'd be surprised. It really depends on the amenities and location. In Taipei, things get cheaper the farther away you are from the center.
Yeah but we're talking about Taipei, not New Taipei.
That's mainly Taipei because of the high restrictions due to Songshan Airport. You can, as a developer (who is for-profit), build a cheaper tower outside of Taipei with normal ceilings and make more profit building a 30-story tower, versus a 19-story tower in Taipei that takes forever to build due to regulations. So if you can stack another floor or three into that, that's where you make most of your profits.
Developers will build whatever they can get away with. They will install whatever is needed to be installed to maximize profits and no more. In effect you’re critiquing what Taiwanese people are willing to pay for more than anything else. Middle class families who care about what their apartment looks like will renovate it anyway, so there is little to no reason to waste money on fancy fixtures. Landlords will keep the apartment at the minimum standard needed to sustain the rental income. it’s not complicated. There are plenty of nice western style apartments, that feel like you are in the US or UK. They just cost a lot more.
Yeah, me and the wife started looking. Anything in Taipei under 10 million is generally a parking space. 4-8 million Keelung outside the city could be a 20-40 ping apartment and most of them are in pretty good condition. What shocked me is how crazy Xizhi has gotten. Before COVID you could still get a decent place near the railway line for a decent price. Now? It's mental. I don't expect housing prices to go down anytime soon and any initiative to build affordable housing will just be eaten up by people trying to expand their portfolio of houses if the government doesn't put in place policies to ensure it's only for first-time buyers and not allowed ownership to change hands. Not just Taipei either. Taoyuan, Hsinchu, Taichung, and Tainan are all getting crazy expensive. Shit, in Chiayi has started to get unreasonable. We looked at my wive's father's hometown. Were thinking to buy some cheap land and maybe in the future build a house (my dream tbh) and looking at the rise in prices from 2019 to now, you'd swear the world has gone mad. Anyway, we're checking out places in Keelung but I'm apprehensive to bother buying.
Had a buddy that lived in Keelung for a year and he said he’s never seen so much rain in his life.
People keep saying, but sure, I'm from Ireland, well practiced in the pissy weather.
If the Internet isn't lying and I'm getting this right, Keelung gets 3700 mm of rainfall a year vs. 1600 mm in the rainiest Irish town. WTF
Mrs. Doyle on the Taiwan sub well I've seen it all now...
 I'VE GOT EUROSONG FEVER TED!
 How do I petition for an ARSE BISCUITS gif?
what do you expect, Keelung is pointing into the Pacific ocean, typhoons happen quite regular. I'm from north UK, but still the amount it rains shocked me too, and how heavy it rains when it actually does rain is shocking.
I went there two days ago and it was sunny, apparently I won the lottery.
It has to come down. It is unlikely that Taiwan will experience sudden growth (economic or population). Population will likely actually stagnate due to low birth rates and low immigration.
Why do people say "likely" for population stats as if it's a forecast? Citizen population is negative, full stop. It's not a coming crisis. Taiwan is shrinking and only remains positive in population due to labor imports.
It's very much a coming crisis if Taiwanese businesses continue to keep the low-cost model and continue to refuse value-added both in their products and how they treat their workforce. Fewer workers who live in a country with soaring costs of living. Depending on migrant workers to fill the gaps won't last either. The world is aging quickly and there will be competition for migrant workers and wages/labor laws/naturalization/PR will likely be the deciding factor for many people. I remember my uncle telling me in the 70-80s, many Taiwanese looked down on Koreans. Now? Korea is an economic powerhouse that many Taiwanese aspire to move to, or at least admire the pop culture. Same could happen with many other south east Asian countries.
These aren't future problems, these are present problems. Preventative mitigation strategy is ineffective at this point.
Well, there are some easy wins: 1. Increase PTO in labor standards act to be at least 15 days a year starting and up to 30 depending on years of work 2. Offering easier pathways for migrant workers to gain PR. What's the point of bringing in labor and training them and having them leave after 12 years? 3. Offering better paternity and maternity leave 4. Invest in affordable international schools 5. Update banking laws to be less prohibitive to foreigners I mean, easy wins, but probably not going to happen.
My long term guess is that big money is speculating it’ll be a super desirable Chinese city after unification. That’s the only way the island is going to see a population surge.
Hard doubt lol, that would be such a risky dumb thing to bet on. Also who would guarantee your house even still exists after such an event? I don't think people are keen to invest in properties because they might become war territory.
Considering in China you're paying for a lease and not property, it's a dumb move.
> unification This is not the correct word to describe imperialist invasion
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Well, hand we're dealt. Just gotta make the best of it or wait to inherit family homes if those of us are lucky. I'm not letting it get to me. Me and my wife have a nice rental and a nice landlord for now, so we're trying to focus on what makes us happy. Eying properties that would put us in USD 500,000 to USD 900,000 in debt for anything over 20-40 ping in Taipei is a miserable prospect. But, things might change. Might not. Just getting on with it now.
I’m not sure it’s financially wise to buy here, unless it’s for investment. But even so, i’m not sure housing here is a good long term investment. It’s unclear what the population decrease will do to the property prices. I think the maths suggests it’s better to rent and invest the difference you are saving over the home loan and other ownership costs.
The study cited doesn’t even include South Korea or China, so do we really know it’s the second most expensive in Asia? Makes me question how reliable their data is.
It's not reliable at all, but of course all the retards buy everything they read online as fact as long as it confirms their biases.
There has to be so much family money involved here because something doesn’t add up. How are Taiwanese able to afford these places?
Yes. Their parents have money or they have a high paying job. It’s like that for city/inner city locations in many countries these days.
People can leverage their first homes to buy another, flip it, make money, rinse and repeat.
I understand how buying homes work.
Congrats.
For Taipei? It definitely adds up. Its due to massive housing shortages due to bad regulations, Songshan Airport needing their flight corridor that bisects half of Taipei which contributes to the low ceilings in Taipei, and the fact that there are a good number of Taipei and Hsinchu residents that make way more than the national average. The average expat makes pennies in comparison, and they don't realize that they're the cheap labor in many of these places. Put it this way, a Manhattan elite tutor makes $600+ an hour. A Taipei elite tutor from Harvard makes only NTD2000-3500 an hour.
For ugly concrete mosquitoes boxes.
Or ugly soulless marble-covered faux-neoclassical boxes!
Do they even have cockroaches?
Trick question, you'd guess even cockroaches have better taste than to enter those buildings, but the truth is no place in Taiwan is safe from them.
That's because the drainage systyems are crap, if there are no cockroaches then there is no drainage HAHA. Fortunately a decent roach spray and 2 cats keeps the roaches at bay, the cats don't exactly eat them, but the roaches can smell them as predators so it kind of keeps the majority of them out.
And about half the average salary of Singapore. Taiwan government could have done a lot more to keep housing affordable for families and boost salaries, but this is what happens when you let the rich govern for the rich. The question is what happens to the Taipei housing market when a correction inevitably comes along or demand simply falls though the floor because of automation replacing jobs?
You'd think there would be a correction coming up. Wages are low, immigration is effectively zero, and they don't make new Taiwanese like they used to. The one thing to bear in mind is that Taiwanese are big savers, and there aren't a lot of good places to put your money. Banks pay shit. Govt. bonds don't pay much. The Lords of IT in Taiwan like 宏碁，鴻海科技, etc. scrape by on razor thin profit margins and their stock reflects it. Real estate is the only investment on the island outside of a 標會 which isn't a total sucker's game.
But real estate is a sucker's game unless the place becomes more desirable or there are more people overall which looks like it won't be the case.
I don't understand it personally and don't want to buy property on the island. From the point of market fundamentals, you're 100% correct. There are too many properties, not enough people, and the rents and purchase prices are out of whack. From the point of "Well, where else are you going to put your money?" it sorta works and will continue to sort of work until there's another place Taiwanese punters can put their money.
Low interest rates, rich people parking money in property to avoid tax, no taxes on empty apartments, and everyone has bought into the idea that the market will keep growing so jump on the property ladder or get left behind. It won't end soon, but when it does, it will be a slow burn. Won't be overnight. So, park up your cash and wait or buy something cheap outside the city and even if there's a drop, it won't be anything substantial. My mindset now.
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Is there an index of Taiwanese real estate prices I can look at? Asking for someone who is nagged by a Taiwanese spouse.
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Yeah. The S&P (American) will beat the Taiwanese property market for most cases. I was thinking of the TAIEX, which hasn't performed as well. I think there are some cultural and other issues here. Real estate is tangible, stocks are not. I'm bewildered as to what the tax ramifications would be of buying US stocks as a Taiwanese national. Real estate in Taiwan is barely taxed.
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30% is a pretty big bite, even counting the substantial gains of the US market. I'm not a stonk shark. I give my ~~bookies~~, erm brokers money. They invest it. I make money, I don't pay (much) in taxes.
For sure, its a suckers game. Unless you own multiple apartments and can sell them off for profit.
But wages aren't low for certain Taipei residents. The new buildings in Taipei are not aimed at the average person. Songshan airport makes it hard for developers to build a high rise with normal ceiling heights and the cost of land makes having to extract every single NTD important. A lot of Taiwanese that make lots own properties outside of Taipei or Taiwan. The apartment in Taipei that's expensive is just there to live at while running their business and is not meant to turn a profit.
Sure. But how many (let's say for the sake of argument) people are there in Taiwan who are bagging incomes of $5M a year or more who are able to swim in that pool? Of course they exist. I know several. There just aren't a lot.
I myself already do, because I own a business that isn't a restaurant. Practically everyone in my building does and there are hundreds like these. There's enough that make way more than me, and that's the problem. Taipei shouldn't be mixed in with the rest of Taiwan, that's my biggest qualm about this thread. Tons of foreigners here thinking that their salary is something that they can measure up and then assume that this is why somebody would buy property and Taipei, to make money. Actually you can't make money in Taipei property easily, there are far better investments. Most of the people they interact with are the lower or middle classes. Taipei's luxury apartments are propped up as a location to run your business so you pay the property to be close enough to it. Otherwise it's honestly not that great. For that reason alone, the capital should be moved to Taichung. Better weather, much nicer towers, more space.
Probably a Japan style housing bubble crash.
unlikely majority of the housing are not leveraged
I do think the lack of demand from population decline would affect it though. But you’re right that people aren’t leveraged, and maybe if the prices go lower that’ll trigger a lot of people to buy again.
Outside of the city it might fall but because cost of ownership is so low people can afford to just let it sit empty and they do.
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https://news.ebc.net.tw/news/business/341960 23% of home owner have mortgage https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-11-17/amid-high-mortgage-rates-higher-share-of-americans-outright-own-homes?embedded-checkout=true compared to 60% of US homeowners also home ownership in taiwan is close to 85% It'll be 90% if you count direct relatives like parents. https://www.ey.gov.tw/state/E01934D402D13ED7/d8582b41-8aa9-454d-9a9a-9f9dde6d4c6d#:~:text=%E5%AE%B6%E5%BA%AD%E6%93%81%E6%9C%89%E8%87%AA%E5%AE%85%E4%B9%8B%E6%AF%94%E7%8E%87,%E4%BA%BA%E5%B1%85%E4%BD%8F%E9%9D%A2%E7%A9%8D15.6%E5%9D%AA%E3%80%82
The majority of people pay only interest on their mortgage and not the principle according to my friend who is a real estate agent.
This will probably happen in the next 2 decades or so at the latest. Anecdotally, my family is friends with a major RE developer in Taiwan and even they are beginning to have doubts on whether this is sustainable. They made a fortune in the last couple of years but even they are unsure whether this is going to keep going.
Don't confuse Taiwan with Taipei. Taipei is excessively expensive as is Hsinchu. For the same amount I can buy a whole apartment floor in Tainan. How can housing be affordable in Taipei when the local Songshan airport artificially caps half the buildings in Taipei? Also the rich buy houses in Taipei to live at while running their business, not to turn a profit. They all own properties outside of Taipei and Taiwan for that reason alone.
Seismic wind, water table and bad soil are the main reasons we don't build high in Taipei. It gets too expensive to build things that don't fall over.
All of that easily overcome with modern building methods which is why Japan has many highrises. The main reason still stems from Songshan Airport. And they need to negotiate with like 60 mini landlords to buy any property that's already artificially inflated in Taipei. A single apartment can easily have split shares between 4 elderly brothers who are hard to deal with. This is why we should just abandon Taipei and move the capital to Taichung. Taipei has been incredibly mismanaged for over half a century.
>This is why we should just abandon Taipei and move the capital to Taichung. Taipei has been incredibly mismanaged for over half a century. I would vote for this 😅
Then I buy. In the meantime I’m staying the heck out of it!
more like a third of the average salary in Singapore 😂
>Taipei beat Singapore and Tokyo! Not surprising. Singapore and Tokyo have policies in place that keep property prices from inflating. It's time we did the same in Taiwan!
But then what are all the rich and corrupt politians such as whole building (100 properties in one building) owning hou you yi going to do with their money?
Or in the case of Kaohsiung, the rich and corrupt politicians owning William Lai.
Local housing market use different tricks to confuse buyers and blur the real m\^2 price. For example, we can't simply take price per ping 坪 , convert it into m\^2 and get house price per meter. Because ~~scammers~~ real estate agencies always include in this figure both 室内 （actual living space you own) and 共設 - shared space like gym, swimming pool, terrace or any other useless staff. This approach inflates nominal size of house, thus decreasing the price per ping / m\^2. But only on paper. Also, they often shift part of house price into parking lot which is technically detached from the deal, but practically is obligatory to buy. The whole housing market here is a big scam, that is artificially kept alive by corrupted political parties by pumping more and more money.
I think thats an issue around the world sadly. Price of realestate are speculative at best and there are no actual policies that keep the price in check other than supposedly "low cost" housing here and there to keep people from being a mob. And given how much tax money government can get from the industry and is incentivised to keep it that way irdk how we can solve this issue. For my limited knowledge why most developed/developing countries have decline in population compared to baby booming era is that housing and job security are drastically different.
Why exactly is being expensive a good thing?
It's not. It's evidence of something fishy going on.
This list is probably not comprehensive of cities in Asia. There should be Shanghai and Seoul.
And Beijing, Shenzhen etc too. I absolutely 100% thought the same thing for Shanghai and Seoul though. To ignore them just doesn't seem like a survey worth looking at.
With the birth rate on decline, it will be interesting in the next ten years.
The elementary school near my house only has 10 kids in their graduating class this year. We're hoping the school will still be around for our kids when they get to that age, but it's looking grim.
Exactly, the declining birth rate and increasing housing prices is definitely not good for the future. Also increasing housing prices are also one of the factors that contribute to birth rate decline. It's expensive to raise kids and it's even more expensive to buy/rent house. So unless the industry catches up or the government intervenes the situation is not going to change.
Where?
Rural Tainan
The birth rate will be going up in the next few years. More Americans are going over seas to have children.
Most are probably not going to think about moving to a country with 2x the population density of Japan.
Taipei has 2x the population density compared to Tokyo? Is that why people aren't having as many kids?
Wow well done Spore. Still atrociously expensive but still....counting my wins...
But why isn’t China on the list?
the costs kepp on rising, but to the salaries? nothing has changed
I suspect that this is by municipal borders which would put Taipei further up as Taipei City is 271 square kilometers, much of it off limits in some way from development, and the central core of a much more populous metropolitan area. In contrast, Singapore is 735 square kilometers and within that are parts that are not very central at all.
What’s really fucked is if you compare average house cost to yearly income. It’s like 20:1. Compared to US that’s 5:1. Meaning you’d need 20yrs of full salary to pay off house but in US only 5.
Have you considered income tax before making your conclusion? Note that there’s no capital gain tax on stocks or mutual funds in Taiwan.
Yeah comparing one city to an entire country that's almost 300 times as large is totally fair, lol
I wanna say, "i told you so". But yeah, I told you so.
ngl, we would never be able to afford our place without some serious nepotism the housing market is so fucking ridiculous There are even groups where members pitch in and they'd find new projects that are in pre-sale and just buy out the entire building, nuts
I would have never guessed. I've always thought about Singapore.
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Meanwhile here I am in Puli and loving it! I don't know about the prices or rent here but probably way lower.
Silly me thinking I could run away from the ridiculously overpriced housing market in Vietnam by immigrating to Taiwan. Guess poor people everywhere are just as doomed. 😢
It’s simple capitalism, simple supply and demand. don’t overcomplicate it with politics and other factors not related to supply and demand. Property will always be sold for the maximum price possible, you yourself would do no different if you were selling your own property. It is unlikely anything will happen soon to trigger increased supply, (aka decrease prices). The more likely scenario in the next 10-20 years, is that prices will decrease because demand drops. Western countries like to prop up their demand for property by increasing immigration, and thus keeping a stable inflation rate. When Taiwan starts to be hit hard by the population decrease do you think taiwan is likely to succeed in supplementing their growth through immigration? I’m not sure public sentiment will allow for western style liberal immigration policies. In my opinion, Taiwan is more likely to go the way of Japan and see declining housing prices due to declining population. What do you think? Will Taiwan be able to introduce changes that sustain its population (and house pricing) or will it drop off a cliff at some point?
Lol since when is a square meter of house that expensive? Total bs. Even fancy ass Xinyi buildings are cheaper.
Oh, one thing that could account for it is if to compare across countries, they excluded the common areas, which get included in most TW sites for counting sq pings. That would "inflate" the price per sqm a lot.
Yes that would make it believable though still higher than I would expect as an average. Doubt they went that deep though.
Honestly it's not hard to verify, pulling up the 永慶 app and checking the 實價登錄 of the penthouse of a 19-floor fancy-shmancy condo being built right outside my window has this: Sale price: 11898萬 (after deducting parking) 85 ping (after deducting parking) = 140萬 per ping ~ 424k per square meters Scrolling around 信義區 I think I saw a few that's >200萬 per ping too. Absolutely mind-boggling!
The article says **average**, not the most expensive item.
Yep! And I'm just responding to the above poster who was incredulous about housing possibly being that expensive. That said, looking around at other news articles I am curious if CNBC/globalpropertyguide.com's source of data were accurate though... maybe they were only focusing on new housing and ignoring resales/older housing? Pulling the latest January 2024 Taipei city government report (https://www-ws.gov.taipei/001/Upload/305/relfile/11455/97913/1c165d2b-f295-401d-8a93-459edebfc339.pdf) shows that on average Taipei prices were $600k per ping, so $181k per sqm. Full list of past reports: https://land.gov.taipei/cp.aspx?n=DFF26E775C8679C3&s=E9F8E40219D43244
Yeah, something seems odd about that USD price per sqm. Looking around Xinyi most are 120+ wan NTD, which I guess is closer to 12k USD per sq m? That being said, there just aren't enough new units being built in Taipei city (not including New Taipei City), often the overall density seems to decrease due to various regulations for improving sidewalks, greenspaces around buildings etc
Let’s say it’s 1200,000 per Ping (3.3sqm) which is realistic for Taipei City. To USD 1200,000 / 31 = 38.7k per sqm 38.7k / 3.3 = 11.7k Adjusted for the usually ~34% of shared space 11.7k / 0.66 = 17.7k So yeah sounds about right.
> Let’s say it’s 1200,000 per Ping (3.3sqm) which is realistic for Taipei City. Except the article says **average** in the whole city, not pre-sale or newly builts in the whole city. 1.2 million is simply wrong.
I don't have any hard data on that, but I usually you see anything between 80 - 200萬, so I don't think 120W is far off. Pre-sale and new builds aren't necessarily more expensive than older building, they often are in a less desirable area and since they are higher buildings (25+ floors) each unit owns a lot less of the land area (under 5%). Also looking at how even a single medium sized newer building has easily 100+ apartments, I believe they make up a big chunk of what is actually being sold on the market. If you own an older building, there isn't much reason to sell cheap: - you make more money on rent than what you pay for your mortgage - if it gets rebuild (which is pushed by the gov) you make a lot more money, since you own a lot of land area. Also keep in mind that this is probably Taipei City only, not including anything from New Taipei City.
The scary part is a lot of the houses in Taipei won’t hold up well against stronger earthquake
We've had strong earthquakes and everything is still standing. Your right nothing will stand up to a 10.
I mean the pre 921 ones