What are the usual ownership terms of buying a landed (e.g. terrace house, villa) property in Taiwan, compared to an apartment (e.g. Room 3-1 on Floor 3)?
When you buy a landed property, do you buy the land and the house that is staying on it in perpetuity? I read that foreigners cannot buy agricultural land - does this remain the case? What about Permanent Resident holders or dual nationals?
What about an apartment? I’ve seen variations to what constitutes “ownership” in other countries, such as a share in the management association for the building, strata titles a 99 year lease on the apartment and so on. Are there standard accepted terms & conditions for such dwellings here or does it really depend on the terms that the buyer has to scrutinize on a case-by-case basis?
Also, in Taiwan, what happens if the building is damaged or destroyed by a typhoon, fire or act of war? Will the government compensate the owners or their heirs should something like this happen? Assuming the government endures the war; what does it say presently in the law?
In Taiwan, the terrace houses you typically see are divided into units called apartments 公寓 Gongyu. The entire building is called a 透天厝 Toutiancuo. You are not likely to buy one of these because they’re almost entirely divided into the aforementioned apartments.
Villas are 別墅 Bieshu. Some are detached. Most are attached. They are expensive and relatively rare in Taiwan.
You mean condo, almost every building is subdivided anyways. They are listed on sites as ‘Elevator buildings’ 電梯大樓
I’m going to stop you right there.
ALL houses on private land zoned for residential and commercial come with a land deed. This includes condo units.
Houses sitting on government land usually have a rental fee associated with it and just come with the house itself, IE the materials. Avoid at all costs. For practicality, I won’t be referring to these further in the post. Beyond this, everything is as you refer to it, landed property. Including high rise condos.
Taiwan is not China or otherwise a communist country. Buying means buying here.
Huge distinction. It is not foreigners cannot buy. It is that it is restricted to nationals with household registration.
Condo.
You own the unit. You pay a management fee for shared spaces. You can contribute to a building democracy and vote on policy changes.
What terms could there be? You buy it, you own it.
That is what insurance is for. Mortgage brokers are going to force you to buy insurance anyways for that.
That is the least of your worries in a war. In war, everything goes out the window. Taiwan may win, taiwan may lose. The PRC might just say get the fuck out, we’re giving it to one of our great Chinese people that we are importing to drown out and dilute opposition and there’s nothing you can do about it. And if that doesn’t work, we’ll make it so even if we give you elections free from corruption, we’ll only give you guys a token number of seats so we can stack the rest of parliament with industry and institution reps that beg us for money in exchange for their loyalty like we do in HK and leave you in perpetual opposition with no power to effect change.
Nobody knows on a mass scale. Something so devastating is unprecedented. For a 311 or 921 style earthquake, they might feel compelled to do something.
But for something minor on a nationwide scale like an earthquake that knocks down one house and it happens to be yours; lucky you, you have insurance.
foreigers cannot to a house. dual or single nationals with or without household registration can. the same regulations are applied to nationals with or without household registration on land ownership. iiuc.
if the purpise of buying the land is to bulid a housr, nwohrs are same with foreigners, because owner needs household registration in the same administrative area with the land to build a house.
I am sorry for the confusingly written post. Please delete it if it is violating any forum rule. Or, if what you mean is my English is not good enough to post on this forum, let me know it clearly. I stop posting.
There are also privately owned properties where the building occupants do not own the land the building is on. Very weird state of affairs but I was offered the land deals to a property in Ximending which was the entire land the 4 story building was on but did not include any of the building, there were 3 different owners of the floors of the building. Asking price was NT$8KK, I believe it finally sold for NT$5KK or so. Got a headache trying to understand how it came about , what use it was to anyone and how it worked if a developer wanted to redevelop the area so bowed out.
There are many weird and wonderful oddities in the Taiwan property market, particularly with older buildings so great care must be taken!
@tando , I understood it. Appreciate very much the help you give in translating Chinese language websites and documents. Very much added-value to the forum.
How does that work exactly? A land title indicates that the government will defend your possession of a parcel of land, but I really don’t see how multiple people can claim possession of the same area. Is it perhaps in the nature of a long-term lease, granting certain rights of occupation or usufruct?
How it work with my apartment is that we own a proportion of the land that the building is on. So, for example, say a building with 5 apartments on is build on a piece of land 100 ping in size, each apartment will get 1/5 of that land, so 20 ping apiece. Added to that, my wife and I co own, so that 20 ping is further split between the two of us, so we have 2 land deed certificates of 10 ping each, one in my name and one in my wife’s name.
That is not my meaning. Your post makes it sound like foreigners cannot own land to buy a house. They can. Agricultural land is restricted to nationals only.
