Yes along with massive immigration. Two things which Taiwan doesn’t have too much of.
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Where did you go to download the records for the apartments? That is extremely useful info, but I have no idea where to get it. Is it openly available information to everyone for any apartment?
Should we make this post a sticky? I’ve just read it again. It’s good reading.
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My bank gave me two choices for mortgages - amortization of principal + interest, or average amortization of principal. I took the first one, which means you pay more initially but lower in the end and it results in lower lifetime interests. I think it’s a better choice if you think your income is higher now than it will be later in life, so you can take more deductions earlier.
Here’s a spreadsheet I made to compare the two methods: Mortgage amortization methods - Google Sheets
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I never got that option from my bank. They only gave me option B. I’ll share some details in the next post about how the rising interest rates have affected the amounts I pay.
Thanks for sharing. Made a copy.
Congrats in Advance! When you are closing the deal ?
Yeah I didn’t know about it until my banker asked me. The local terms are「本息定額攤」vs「 本金平均攤 」and I found some resources online by googling
Thanks, already closed
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I see Fubon bank also has a mortgage calculator
https://www.fubon.com/banking/personal/mortgage/house_loan/house_loan/house.html
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How did you get such a low downpayment?
He’s a citizen
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Really? When me and my wife (citizen) enquired we were told 30% downpayment unless the house was brand new, in which case 20%.
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I overheard a conversation at standard chartered a while ago where a local wanted a mortgage for a ~30 year old home in Taipei. They offered a 80% loan and the person asked for 85%, the banker agreed, happened in a 15 second chat
Every bank has different rates for different locations. I got quotes from 12 different banks. Highest loan amount to lowest loan amount was 20% difference. Downpayment was 15-30% depending on bank. Interest rate on the other hand wasn’t too far off. Highest to lowest at the time was only .14 difference.
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Depends on many factors. Income level, age, how many properties you own, savings, employer brand and unfortunately also citizenship status.
My gf works in a science park they offered her 90% on her first home.
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I may be wrong on this, but it may have to do with the value of the apartment. When it costs so little (5.8 million), paying 15% or 20% is just a difference of 290,000 NT$. Or maybe it’s not the value. Perhaps the loan officers just need a bit of push. No one offered me 85%; I always asked for it.
I read the same thing in several online articles. My apartment building is 25 years old, so I wasn’t expecting to get even 80%, but surprisingly, both CTBC and HSBC offered that to me immediately, so I negotiated for better.
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Interesting. Do you mean that the banks are more likely to offer a lower downpayment if the property price is lower? We are also looking at the 5-6 million NTD range.
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It’s possible. I don’t see why they’d offer 80% directly for a 25-year-old apartment.
Another observation I have is that going from 80 to 85 may depend on the appraisal value vs. the actual value. E.g. initially, banks only offered me 80% of their appraised value, which was a million lower than the agent’s quoted price (on average).
For the apartment I ended up buying, the bank’s appraisal was already 1 million higher than what I was quoted. In the end, I got the apartment for 1.2 million cheaper than the bank-appraised value, so even at 85%, the bank was still giving me less money than what they were expecting to give me for that apartment for 80%.
Just as an example :
80% of 7 million = 5,600,000
85% of 5.8 million = 4,930,000
Again, this is just an assumption. I honestly don’t know the real factors behind this.
My suggestion would be to first get an appraisal, and then ask what %age they are willing to loan you.
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Would appreciate if you can teach us how to do this?! Thanks!
Sure, no problem. Let me find some free time; I will try to break it all down into steps so that it can be done for any building/community in Taiwan.
You can send me a 591-link of a community you are interested in, and I can use that as an example.
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There’s a couple sites for doing this including an official gov site. But my favorite is plex:
Other sites you can use: 5163, 591, leju. The government site is https://lvr.land.moi.gov.tw/
There’s 2 formulas for calculating price per ping. Including parking and excluding parking, sometimes realtors try to trick you by using different formulas to arrive a price that seems cheaper. You can use your own spreadsheet to arrive at final price per ping based on the two different pricing formulas.
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Thanks Jim! Will check this out over the weekend.
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