I bought a house (+ Taiwan Home Loan Interest Calculator)

[Fuzzy_Barbecue]

@Incubus

This is the part I’m interested in. How did you “negotiate like hell”? You got a great deal! The previous owner must have been really strapped for cash.

The first advantage for me was even before I went it to see it I already knew the owner had bought it for exactly 2.8 million NT$ in 2012. I learnt from the agents that the owner was in Taipei and had several properties in the same building. I knew he had never lived in this place. It was only used for rent. I presumed he wanted to sell it because he needed cash. Also, I bet he was still paying mortgage for it.

This was around the time interest rates were going up and market was cooling down. Many landlords were raising rents or putting up their 2nd/3rd homes for sale. That was the same time my rent was also raised.

Market price for that apartment was 7 million, even the bank said so, but this guy started with 6.8 already, which was pretty fair already, and showed some desperation. It was on the 4th floor, so I knew there weren’t many other interested parties. Before going to the negotiation table, I already made up my mind that I was only going to give 3 million NT$ profit to the owner.

2.8 + 3.0 = 5.8 m

I got this number based on average price of a lower floor apartment of similar pings sold in that community over the last 5 to 10 years.

I felt that it’d be hard for him to pass 3 million in profit, if he had no other viable buyers.

The Taiching realtors, refused to accept my 5.8 offer. They said it’s not possible to accept a lower offer, when there’s a higher one already on the table from another party (that suddenly magically came in to existence, only when we started negotiating).

They said, the other party was offering 6.2 million, and if’d I could offer 6, they would try and convince the owner to accept it, otherwise I shouldn’t bother, because the owner would never accept it.

(I had a gut feelin they were lying and that the other party was imaginary. I asked my wife, if she was willing to risk losing this place, if it turned out they were telling the truth and I was wrong. She gave me the green light.)

So, I refused to budge, and insisted on 5.8. They left saying that if I didn’t raise my offer, they were meeting with the other party that night at 6:00 pm and would probably accept the other offer. I told them it’s fine, they should go with the better offer.

By 3:00 pm, they contacted me again on the phone, saying, it was my last chance, or I would lose this place. The agent tried REALLY hard to convince me. Said, I should offer 6.0. Shouldn’t lose this “great deal” for just 200K. I refused and told them, good luck to the other buyer.

20 minutes later they contacted me and said the owner agreed to accept my offer of 5.8m and we could sign the paperwork.

I’d still say that we definitely got lucky. If we’d failed on this one, we’d probably still be renting, because most places were out of reach or too shitty for the low-price. The one I got is pretty nice actually. I’ll share photos once I have the chance.

[Satellite_TV]

@Fuzzy_Barbecue

I’d still say that we definitely got lucky. If we’d failed on this one, we’d probably still be renting, because most places were out of reach or too shitty for the low-price. The one I got is pretty nice actually. I’ll share photos once I have the chance.

Good thing is your hunch was right. There are still many vacant apartments in Taiwan. It’s normal agents and sellers want to get the maximum price. You really did your homework and the agents must have been shocked when you showed them your research. They hope you don’t make a blog about it on Chinese language forums. Even if you posted it in English on Chinese forums many people would love what you wrote.

[nz]

@slawa

Like the great idea of banks to let foreigners deposit cash to get a credit card with the same amount in monthly limit as the deposit.

To be fair, that was the only way I was able to get a credit card as a US citizen in the US when I was 20 or so years old and had nearly 20k USD invested with that same bank. “But you can see that I have money!!” Ah, but you don’t have a credit history…

But Costco TW gave me a credit card right away. When Cathay ended their alliance with Costco, I was sent one of their “cube” cards automatically in the mail.

[Joebie]

Somewhere on this website, you can find the sale prices of homes. Ministry of the Interior: Real Estate Transaction Real Price Enquiry Service Network (moi.gov.tw)
When I was signing the paper with my realtor to make an offer, they also had a printout of the same info for houses in that complex and surrounding area. This was to give you a basic idea of how much per ping people were paying so you know if your offer is high or low.

[Joebie]

@Fuzzy_Barbecue

So, I refused to budge, and insisted on 5.8. They left saying that if I didn’t raise my offer, they were meeting with the other party that night at 6:00 pm and would probably accept the other offer. I told them it’s fine, they should go with the better offer

Congrats on getting the house and at the price you wanted. I had almost the exact opposite experience as yours. The house I was originally interested in, the owner wouldn’t budge on their price. I went to a 2nd realtor, and they showed us a few other houses in the same complex. The only other one that I was interested in, they said they will just go do a cold call to get an idea of how much the owner was willing to let it go for. The next day, they told me to just forget about that one too as that 2nd owner wasn’t willing to budge on their price either. However, I wanted that 2nd house, so I told them to make an offer with a negotiation period of 2 weeks that was slightly lower than what the owner was asking for. My realtor visited the owner multiple times in the next 10 days and message was essentially the same, that the owner wouldn’t budge. They started to show us other houses and told us that we shouldn’t rush to purchase it. Said the 2 houses that I like will still be there in 6 months. However, I told him to just up my offer to the owner’s asking price with the caveat that it is dependent on that my loan gets approved. We got the house in the end. After we got it, we wondered if we were played by our realtor or not. However, those thoughts disappeared when we found out the original house that we want was also sold 1 week later. And it sold for a much higher price than what we paid for ours. So suddenly we went from, we paid high for our house, to feeling like it was a fair deal.

[The]

@Fuzzy_Barbecue

20 minutes later they contacted me and said the owner agreed to accept my offer of 5.8m and we could sign the paperwork.

What would happen when tell them your mum came back from catholic priest, to who Jesus told deal has to be 5.5 mio twd or all of involved souls will be lost forever?

5.5 are lucky numbers and will bring enormous wealth to everyone, they should praise this deal and put copy of contract on the wall in their office

Great details btw

[Satellite_TV]

@nz

When Cathay ended their alliance with Costco, I was sent one of their “cube” cards automatically in the mail.

Most Costco members received their Cuba cards last year. I know my wife and I did. Every member is sent one.

[Incubus]

Realtors are such lying bastards.

[nz]

@Satellite_TV

@nz

When Cathay ended their alliance with Costco, I was sent one of their “cube” cards automatically in the mail.

Most Costco members received their Cuba cards last year. I know my wife and I did. Every member is sent one.

My point was that the credit cards for foreigners issue isn’t as bad as people make it out to be. Not saying we don’t run into plenty of problems surrounding all things banking, but credit cards not being easily issued to people who don’t have a history of credit isn’t unique to TW. Once you get a credit history here, you’re good to go with as many cards as you want.

[izzy]

congratulations and good luck.
Nice to know there is still affordable housing kn Taiwan in our community in Taipei, a 45 ping apartment in a 42 year old building is 32 million…
The community i live in has 214 units, but only 3 are for sale, i was suprised you have 20 on the market at the same time.

[Fuzzy_Barbecue]

@Quesito

Naturalized Taiwanese is not the same as Taiwanese? How can 1 and 3 be different?

New naturalized Taiwanese with no Taiwanese spouse (who can be a guarantor) is a little bit like dealing with a regular foreigner. I don’t have a Taiwanese family, with roots in Taiwan, no wife, no parents, siblings, or assets to speak of. Nothing really anchoring me to Taiwan, except my ID and my job. This is just my feeling. I could be wrong, but I thought not having a Taiwanese spouse worked against me a little bit. Most loan officers I talked to asked if my “Taiwanese” wife would be my guarantor.

@Satellite_TV

When there are like 20 apartments in the same building for sale its makes negotiating better.

@Incubus

Now there goes the resale value. But of course the OP said he didn’t care about that.

It’s kind of a big community, with many buildings. I think over 400 apartments. I calculated an average of 10 sales a month consistently for over 10 years, and prices had mostly gone up, as with the rest of Taiwan. From what I have heard, many of the apartments are owned by people from the north who don’t live here, and they sell and resell very quickly to make a quick profit. I found so many apartments that were sold/resold 3 or 4 times in less than five years, each time for a higher price.

@Brianjones

Fuck I hate Firstbank aswell full of racists and idiots.

Pretty disappointed with them.

@Brianjones

If I want to buy a house can I hire you as my consultant?

I’d be happy to help and share what I know, but honestly, I know very little. Though, I am happy to have a place of my own, I am still not sure if I made the right decision.

@silly.putty

Fake (including public areas) or real (主建物)?

The common area is about 10 pings; I have got about 6 or 7 pings on the balcony, and the rest is the apartment itself. When I was researching apartments, I found the common area ratio to be a lot more with newer buildings and lesser with older ones. I don’t know the right term for this in Chinese, but on the 591 website there is a checkmark that is google-translated to “low postulate”. This will show you apartments with a much lower ratio of common area.

@slawa

I heard some banks will let you pay partially early, but with additional fees on top since the bank would loose out on some of the profits. Making it essentially pointless.

I specifically checked about this with the bank. They said that as long as I don’t try to pay all of it in less than 3 years, there will be no penalty if I want to pay off my loan early.

@Joebie

Some banks will not give you a quote until you have already got papers to show that you are in contract. Most of them say they need to goto property to provide a quote. The quotes that I got back varied greatly from bank to bank, not only in terms of appraisal amount, but also loan percentage. Some were at 60% while some were at 80%.

This is a real problem. Banks would only give me proposals but no guarantees, not until I brought a contract. I was really worried after I signed the contract and paid the deposit, and still didn’t have a approved loan yet. Thankfully, everything worked out well in the end. That’s why I went really cheap to reduce my overall risk. My 15% downpayment was only 870K. I could have gotten a better place with a 2 million deposit, but I wanted to hold on to 50% of my savings in the bank for life/emergencies.

@Brianjones

Go to the property ? Don’t they just look up the address? For cities they have clear guidance, for rural areas they get lazy because they don’t have a proper database and can be more reluctant to give loans.

In addition to their own system, I saw the CTBC officer checking this website (https://www.leju.com.tw/) before giving me an appraisal price. It’s pretty detailed and shows recent sales prices visually in a building/community by floor.

@Brianjones

Some qs.
Those apartments you looked at , they were in your neighborhood not all same building community, right? Were there really 20 for sale in one community ?

It’s my impression Kaohsiung has a large amount of rentals available now so probably also a large selection of properties, is it a buyers or sellers market in your opinion?

5.8 million for a 45 ping apartment looks like good value for sure. Has elevator and security and services?

Your major fit out costs will be air-conditioning, what else?

I only looked at one single community. I had spent 2 years there already, so there were no surprises; I knew all the pros/cons of the place. It does have elevators and security. Garbage is picked up outside the apartment in the hall.

The number of apartments for sale in the community has accelerated since the interest rate increased, but strangely prices have also gone up by up to 2 to 4 million since 2020, which is weird. Rent prices went up from avg of 15K to 20K. Parking rents went up from 1000 to 2000 in just a year. I can’t make sense of it actually.

I haven’t checked lately, but last Dec, it was a buyer’s market. More people were trying to sell, and fewer people wanted to buy. I read many articles at the time which said apartments were staying on the market a lot longer than before.

Yup, got the air conditioners, washing machine, and fridge in the first month, all from Costco in installments. Then slowly bought most of the furniture I needed from IKEA, also mostly on installments. At first, I talked to a contractor who quoted a minimum of 600K and 2 to 3 months’ time. I got most of the things I needed from IKEA for 150K approx. I delivered and assembled everything myself, so I saved quite a bunch on that too. I think apart from the Kitchen, which is still the original, the rest of the home is mostly furnished now.

@The

What a perfect morning and read before getting active on job. Interesting you started 50 % 50 % (principle :interest) in amortization table. Did you negotiate this?

I only got this far with CTBC, but they made it seem like it wasn’t negotiable. I had the option to delay paying the principal for up to 36 months, but the interest still had to be paid in the same way. I didn’t take the option to delay the principal. I didn’t want to turn a 30-year loan into 33 years.

@bdog

I couldn’t see anything about how many bedrooms this apartment has, guessing 2 or 3 if 45 ping?

3 bedrooms, two bathrooms, 3 balconies

Also is the loan fixed rate or variable?

I need to check the exact figure, but part of it is fixed, and a small part is variable ( I think it’s 0.6%) which will adjust according to the rate set by the central bank.

@Joebie

Somewhere on this website, you can find the sale prices of homes. Ministry of the Interior: Real Estate Transaction Real Price Enquiry Service Network (moi.gov.tw)

Thanks for sharing the link. I did use this as well as 591 to get all the historical sales figures.

[zeebee]

This sounds shady af. Isn’t the realtor legally required to show all offers to the sellers? Sounds like they were trying to profit by bullying you into a higher offer.

[silly.putty]

@Fuzzy_Barbecue

I don’t know the right term for this in Chinese

I think you mean 公設比.

[Satellite_TV]

@nz

My point was that the credit cards for foreigners issue isn’t as bad as people make it out to be.

My wife was rejected for a Coscto Credit card. She owns property with no mortgage, had around plenty of money in her account, earned money from guest house. Reason, not employed with regular salary.

[Satellite_TV]

@Quesito

Naturalized Taiwanese is not the same as Taiwanese? How can 1 and 3 be different?

If you just naturalized some people think you are still “new” to Taiwan. When I was rejected for a loan I had paid cash for a foreclosed property at an auction. The value was more than 5 times the bid put in. Also at the court for the bidding, they open at 9am close bidding at 12pm. My wife was the only one there so bid NT$100 more than the reserve price at 11:59am lol

Manager told me loan amount was too small ( 3 million ) for too short a time. Borrow 10 million for a 15 year loan no issues. I should have and bought more properties, or bitcoin lol. I didn’t

There are lots of places on auction sites but you need to be cash ready and lot’s of banks don’t want to make loans to fore closed properties. You have to pay 10% deposit and balance in 30 days. So you could get a loan done. Some other foreigners have posted they bought this way.

[BigDave]

My wife hasn’t worked for ten years and she gets credit cards easily.

[Satellite_TV]

@BigDave

My wife hasn’t worked for ten years and she gets credit cards easily.

Once you have one other banks just line up and make offers. I bought a new Ford Ranger in 2015. I got a 5 year loan and also bought the extended warranty for 5 years. I don’t drive a lot so only 77,000km on it. A couple of days ago I get a call from a Toyota dealer offering me a car loan. We had a nice chat but I said my car still in near new condition so for present time not looking to buy a new car. I got a nice text message from the Toyota lass about a car loan anyway. If I do buy another car will do a loan in my wife’s name just to get the credit history. In fact I hope my Ranger is my last new car. I get my wife to use her card a lot so I can pay it off and build up her credit history. Her use of card is double her listed income lol. She could increase the credit limit at anytime. One you have cards, use them. We don’t use debit cards. I also just wait for card to get low on amount left then go to ATM and pay the card to a small credit plus, maybe 1 or 2K cause it’s used quickly again.

If I passed away I want my wife to be able to continue the income stream we have now and if she needed a loan to be able to get one. She can already run my business without me, build and setup servers. She’s the local village IT lass lol.

[bdog]

@Satellite_TV

I got a nice text message from the Toyota lass about a car loan anyway.

The sales rep was probably just assuming it will be under your wife’s name. Just like what @Fuzzy_Barbecue mentioned about the officer at the bank’s reaction when he pulled out his wife’s ID, and noticed that she wasn’t a local.

[Satellite_TV]

@bdog

The sales rep was probably just assuming it will be under your wife’s name.

Ridiculous comment. Firstly she doesn’t even know if I am married, divorced or have a husband. I’m a citizen, my Chinese name is just that it is not a translation of a foreign name. Show it to anyone and they will just say sure it’s a Taiwanese name.

She called due to my my own car loan history. I’ve been a citizen for over 2 decades. She didn’t even know I was an immigrant on the phone. Not a word spoken in English. Fuzzy was standing in front of a bank staff member and does not speak Chinese at the level where he can do these things… Totally different scenario than a sales call on the phone.

Also car dealers also lend to foreigners without a guarantee. A friend of mine with APRC was with me when my vehicle was being serviced. The sales manager said they will arrange loans for foreigners but most dealers are just lazy to do the paperwork cause it’s easier if someone has ID Card.

The text message even included my current car number plate and other details. Toyota lass called hoping I was ready to buy another car as many people do buy new cars after 5 - 7 years.

[cluckin_bell]

Congrats on the purchase.

@Fuzzy_Barbecue

By 3:00 pm, they contacted me again on the phone, saying, it was my last chance, or I would lose this place. The agent tried REALLY hard to convince me. Said, I should offer 6.0. Shouldn’t lose this “great deal” for just 200K. I refused and told them, good luck to the other buyer.

20 minutes later they contacted me and said the owner agreed to accept my offer of 5.8m and we could sign the paperwork.

So it was proven to be a lie? In most countries that would be fraud and they would lose their relator license.