I’d like to find a loft-style apartment in Taipei or Xinbei. I mean loft in the NYC sense: lots of space (typically 800+ square feet) in a single open room. Apartments like this in NYC were frequently converted from industrial uses and have some hallmark design characteristics (large windows, exposed load-bearing columns, etc), though of course sometimes new apartments are built in this style as well.
I don’t care about the design at all, I only care about the amount of space in a single room. The primary reason I care about this is to be able to set up a very large table for big group dinners inside my apartment. Also to note: another meaning of “loft” is an open, elevated subfloor inside an apartment; those are cool, and not infrequently are found in loft apartments, but that’s not what I mean here.
So anyway, any advice on how to find an apartment that either consists of or contains an 800+ square foot room, if that kind of thing exists in the Taipei area? Neighborhoods to look at, terminology to use, search terms on 591, specific agents to talk to? My Chinese is currently weak but in the process of being resurrected, and my budget is up to 50k NTD/month.
Taipei was never an industrial city so it’s unlikely you’ll find a loft converted from an industrial building. You can search for an open-floor commercial space instead. These usually consist of the entire floor of a building, and are meant to be leased to a shop or business.
BTW if your primary use is to host large home dinner parties and you don’t need to be in the center of town, then a large normal apartment should suffice. How do you think people host dinner parties? We’re not talking about Hong Kong here.
You can try “開放式” (open concept), but that usually means someone built a 30 story building without any consideration for how the people inside would actually use it, so even the location of a sink or toilet ends up being a nightmare. (And it usually means there are open concrete walls and exposed wires and pipes, as it’s literally just an unfinished unit, not a well-planned “open concept” space)
There actually are loftish style apartments in Taipei but you’ll have to look for them. I know one guy who uses one as a work space. Kitchen in the back and one long, open space up front. High ceiling and quite nice. It’s an older apartment and was never “renovated”. It has yet to be chopped up into small rooms with a dropped ceiling. This place is near Taipei arena. I think the key is to look for older buildings with mixed use spaces.
This is very true!! When I lived in Taipei area, I lived in mixed use space which could have been an office loft. I had local help, as a girl I know was also looking for an apartment so we became flat mates to a 30ping mixed use place . It was in 三重 which now has direct metro line to Taipei city (10min+ depending on part of Taipei). We did have to fix it up and decorate it (mostly with stuff from Ikea), lots of open space to cost to cool/heat was but more than a place with rooms.
You can search for commercial space instead. These usually consist of the entire ground floor of a building, and are meant to be leased to a shop or business.
Interesting idea. Probably tough to make it work, but would be fun to look into. I’m not sure how zoning works in Taipei, do you know if I would be legally permitted to live in a commercial space? Also, assuming that like in the US, commercial leases tend to be for longer durations than residential leases?
BTW if your primary use is to host large home dinner parties and you don’t need to be in the center of town, then a large normal apartment should suffice. How do you think people host large home dinner parties? We’re not talking about Hong Kong here.
Fair point. I actually kind of had the impression that hosting large dinner parties at home (20+ people) was somewhat less common than in the US, but am I wrong? Most apartments I’ve seen in Taipei, even pretty nice ones, aren’t really set up for that.
Not very common if you’re living in the center of Taipei, but are you set on living in Taipei City or would you consider New Taipei City? I think most foreigners who want larger living space opt for the latter, and usually have no problem finding a large apartment.
Come to think of it, I had a friend some years ago (moved back to the US) who had a whole floor to himself in a house somewhere up in the mountains. About 20 minutes from the nearest MRT (forgot which one. We had a thanksgiving dinner and it was quite big and comfortable. Again, this was more of an old style construction without all the chopped up rooms and dropped ceilings.
Here and there you can find ‘factories’ among residential buildings in the old part of the city. Maybe a place where they made commercial ice blocks or something. They mostly have high ceilings and ‘loft’ areas.
