Well yes most young folk get money from their parents, otherwise they basically have no hope of purchasing property here. Thats a trend overseas
also. I earn (at times)
many multiples of the median Taiwan salary (yes also
far from rich but Probably
in top few % of salaried earners
in the
country ) and I would still
struggle saving for property investment
along with any other investments
while also taking care of family living expenses. But I do manage to save a a fair bit more that my home country as
rent is so much cheaper…thank God! Mortgage costs would be more expensive in Taiwan but you would not get the same quality housing in general.
To be honest, though there are several reasons, what has stopped me a few times from purchasing a home here is job security. The mortgages are quite attractive, payments are doable with a salary considered in the higher local levels, and with a reasonable cost of living, saving for the down payment is not a monumental task, even on my own. If I was married, it would be even easier. But without family backing, taking on a mortgage with jobs like we foreigners have here, on one year contracts, is quite a gamble, IMHO. And I am quite adverse to risk.
Plus it is a longer than average commitment, 20 to 30+ years mortgages … and no way to win in the divorce, unless you make quite a good deal in the transaction. But most people who step for the first time in the property ladder will not be able to purchase a property suitable for a good trade, unless they are very lucky or savvy or both.
In my case, the properties I can afford are not the ones that can be flipped easily and I am not going to be one of the countless of locals waiting for the deux ex macchina of a real estate developer to bless me with untold riches when they buy my crumbling gongyu for a gazillion zillion and add another apartment to boot.
Other issues to be considered are location, safety, overall living conditions. What you can afford may not meet the criteria a foreigner is used to, and what does, unless on an expat salary, and/or other considerable resources, is quite a gamble.
Finally, I have been chasing the elusive rabbit of property costs. The costs keep rising but I do not really perceive an increase in “value”. Are conditions getting better for the amount of money I’d be paying? What I am getting for 70 million is really what 70 million is worth?
The foreigners settling here, buying property, IMHO, are the ones as said married with children , planning to stay long time. As Omni, they choose something close to the in laws, kids school, etc. not market value investment considerations. The house fulfills a specific need for shelter more than investment, IMHO, AFAIK. The people I know who have bought properties here have done so under the wife’s name and with the wife’s family support -big chunk of payment- so actually it all stays in locals’ hands.
EDIT:
and on a more global perspective, it is interesting to get this topic as I was listening to a video that Blaque set in the Spanish thread. There is this writer talking about the situation there, which coincidentally is the situation here and in many other places: you have a lost generation, a generation that is trapped in a crisis that is here to stay because the business elite benefits too much from it to let it go. So, a salary of 1000 euros 10 years ago, that was called appalling, now would be a blessing as people get 500 euros or less and are told to be happy as it is better than nothing. What happens is that the same people who get those salaries are now the new poverty line, the ones that cannot afford education, the young people who cannot get married or have children, the children that are undernourished because they cannot get 3 decent meals a day and the school cafeterias are closed because the government says the real problem is obesity… You have disconnect between the ones in power, who control and benefit from the real estate kaputs, and the people blow, likes leaves in a current. Really scary situation. So this idea that enterprises are doing well with this model I compare to cutting off your own leg to sell it as meat. Sure, you will be “thinner”, you will “weight less”, you will think of yourself as “prettier” -like those pretty statements for the investors- but you won’t be able to move and at the end, you’ll bleed to death.
Yep job insecurity is a biggie
for me too, given the way that Taiwanese companies regularly chop out older more expensive
workers don’t know how the locals
don’t freak out about the leverage they take on. It’s not that Im afraid of not working, it’s sustained earning power that is a concern. It’s easy to get a job in Taiwan but most jobs pay shit even for middle managers, and many folks from well off families don’t really work at all as the income is like peanuts to them compared to family handouts. Anyway if the market says ‘it’s X cheaper renting’ and you are able to be mobile to follow the best opportunities (beyond this little island) well then renting it is!
HHII, if you don’t mind my prying, did you have to work hard to convince the wife of the merits of renting?
No, I’ve not been very good at saving so she knows it was
difficult financially, we don’t have
much family backing to help either and she knows the job market is quite limited here, we always have one eye on going somewhere else. We would
love to own a house but its just proven too difficult along with the fact that its always been very feasible to rent at fairly reasonable prices.
Im paying 26k a month
which is by far the most I’ve paid in Taiwan for rent ,
to pay a mortgage on similar
property would
surely be 50-60j/mth with a massive deposit down.
So to buy a decent sized place we would have to move out to Ljnkou or Taoyuan, Linkou is okay but a bit of a commute and still a bit overpriced I think, I don’t much like the idea of staying in Taipei for much longer to be honest. Lets be honest most
of it is fugly concrete with no history and a mono ethnic rather boring place!
I would have been quite interested to buy in a place
with a bit of history and culture like Tainan and perhaps in Taichung IF the job market and air
connections were better in those places but they are not. My wife
will earn peanuts working in those places , total shit pay for locals.
They are okay places for retiring but hard to earn money unless some type of business owner.
Truth be known I have the opportunity to move to Shanghai but it doesn’t impress me either, It’s simply kind of a bigger version of Taipei but also not very nice place to live. Buying something decent there would also be a massive stretch. I think working in some
places in UK/Europe for a while might be much nicer, although I would never go near London as simply not interested in the commute and could not afford it.
Same with hometown Dublin, rents of 2bd apt now average 50-60k a month , nightmare. Buying a house is also a difficult proposition there.
I reckon the best and plan is to try to find a nice but relatively large regional city to settle down for a while (prob UK), so that IS the plan depending on a few things job and immigration wise.
I think Taipei, even though a capital city is not helping my career, has poor prospects for better income and I can’t learn much from locals anymore.
You can tell I’m a bit
browned off with Asia at the moment!
Like the idea, but need to do a lot of homework or a good nose for good deals. Key is to find a place that is easy to sell when needed.
Notice that usually the parents in Taiwan who help the kids with the down payment will demand the title deed of the new home to be drawn only with their kid’s name. But the problem is when the daughter or son-in-law help to pay the monthly mortgage payment. In case of a divorce, the property is granted totally to the person indicated in the title deed. The paying partner doesn’t get anything.
I doubt that. Unless you signed a prenuptial agreement, both parties own the house.
Well no, there’s actually pretty well established numbers on such things. 12% annualized since 2009 is what it is more or less. And like I said, go back another 10 years and it’s far less than that, as it is in any country in the world. Real estate will usually just edge out inflation in the long run. Inflation, interest rates, and real estate prices will always be tied together.
I have no idea what that’s supposed to mean. 
My base assumption is simply down payment money in a house vs down payment money into investments and wait several years to see who is better off. Not rocket science here. Real estate is a very poor investment compared to many other investment classes. Again, not my numbers, just a fact. Despite Taiwan’s booming housing prices, it still can’t overcome the problem of opportunity cost. The longer you invest in other assets, the better off you will be relatively speaking.
Real estate vs pretty much every other asset class is a relatively poor investment. And we aren’t even factoring in the problems with property taxes / maintenance costs being an added negative income stream, and the fact that mortgages are very heavily weighted to interest payments in the first several years, with principal growth coming much later on…
That’s great that you’ve done so well, and other people do as well. But when talking about investments, anecdotal stories of isolated success at market timing and luck mean very little for the general public. There’s people who could just as easily say, I plopped down money on LVS stock in 2009, made 1000%. Took that, threw it in Tesla, made 500% more, etc etc… That means very little in the grand scheme of things. The fact remains, the AVERAGE real estate price appreciation is far lower than many other asset classes.
Not taking anything away from your success though, good job flipping those properties 
Well no, there’s actually pretty well established numbers on such things. 12% annualized since 2009 is what it is more or less. And like I said, go back another 10 years and it’s far less than that, as it is in any country in the world. Real estate will usually just edge out inflation in the long run. Inflation, interest rates, and real estate prices will always be tied together.
I have no idea what that’s supposed to mean. My base assumption is simply down payment money in a house vs down payment money into investments and wait several years to see who is better off. Not rocket science here. Real estate is a very poor investment compared to many other investment classes. Again, not my numbers, just a fact. Despite Taiwan’s booming housing prices, it still can’t overcome the problem of opportunity cost. The longer you invest in other assets, the better off you will be relatively speaking.
[/quote]
Homeowners aren’t making that 12% on only the down payment portion of the house. They are making 12% on the entire value of the house that is financed at a significantly lower (and variable) interest rate. This isn’t to say that I think it was a good investment (insane risk) since this is basically like trading on margin with a potentially high variable interest rate but the leveraged returns that the downpayment made are much, much better than the 12% you state even if that is how much the actual asset appreciated yearly.
I doubt that. Unless you signed a prenuptial agreement, both parties own the house.[/quote]
This is not USA. Taiwan doesn’t even have prenups FYI. You need to get more information from a local lawyer. There are plenty of cases here about the issue, some men divorcing their wives after +10 years and leaving them homeless because the home title deeds don’t bear the wives names. Watch the TV news.
Thank for the confirmation. I bet that the few foreigners buying property under their wife name (because they have been told it’s “tai mafan” to do it under a waiguoren’s name), might not be aware of that!
Or they are not allowed to purchase property in Taiwan. Not every nationality can - in spite of reciprocity, more than because of it. Or that the bank will not make the loan to the foreigner, so they put it under the local woman’s name to get it -even if she’s unemployed. Problem is if they get divorced, bye bye roof. Yes, even though foreigner paid dutifully to the bank. Very hard to prove, big fight, may or may not win.
Furthermore, observe around you and you will see there are many local cases where they get divorced… yet live under the same roof. That sometimes is because they are tied down by the payments. They can’t sell the house and split even if ordered by the judge because they simply can’t sell the house and not end in debt. Or the usual either party has no where else to live.
Not to mention the typical the woman gets kicked out and loses the kids and home, especially if foreigner, particularly if SouthEast bride.
Even in death it is a problem. There is hardly anyone here who “buys the farm”. Weird with all the insurance they sell here, this is not one of their most popular products. I know several Taiwanese women who lost the house when the husband died as there was not enough money to make the payments and they did not have insurance payment to cover it.
Keen observation.
Keen observation.[/quote]
Not really. As I have said before, such kind of insurance is mandatory in my own birth country. Yet, here, when I asked for it, a couple of years ago, they told me it was a brand new product, in the test phase. Mind boggling.
Just a sidepoint, a lot of local banks are becoming more willing to let a foreigner get a homeloan in their own name with no cosignor, if they refuse ask to speak to Taipei about it and if they still refuse, try another bank.
So you are telling us that it is not mandatory to insure the loan, so that in case of death, the insurance will cover the rest of the due loan?!?
Not in Taiwan.
It’s not needed in NZ either, along with a whole lot of other countries.
That said,it is still very common practice.
I doubt that. Unless you signed a prenuptial agreement, both parties own the house.[/quote]
This is not USA. Taiwan doesn’t even have prenups FYI. You need to get more information from a local lawyer. There are plenty of cases here about the issue, some men divorcing their wives after +10 years and leaving them homeless because the home title deeds don’t bear the wives names. Watch the TV news.[/quote]
Legally, under the standard statutory marital property regime in Taiwan law, if a couple buys a house during their marriage and subsequently divorces, all residual assets acquired during the marriage, including the house or its value, should be split equally between the divorcing spouses. This is true regardless of which spouse has their name on the title to the house – unless the divorcing spouses mutually agree otherwise or had a pre-existing mutual agreement to use a different marital property regime.
Nevertheless, having the title of the house in both names could give an extra layer of legal protection (for example against a sole-title-holding spouse disposing of a house and hiding the proceeds before a divorce), and also probably a more persuasively advantageous position in divorce settlement negotiations or litigation.