I currently spend about 3-4 months a year (spread over 2-3 visits) in Taiwan. I expect it to increase to 6+ months a year.
I am considering to buy a condo in the Taoyuan HSR area. My thinking is that this gives me a relatively lower cost option, with access to Taipei (where I expect to spend 75% of my fun/play time), Hsinchu, Taichung and the Airport.
Would love to hear if anyone has some some experience either living in that area, or by the process of looking for a place there?
If anyone thinks it is a bad idea, I would certainly like to hear that too.
have you done the math for this?
apartments in that area are quite expensive, i’d guess on average from 10million NTD upwards.
how long will this work keep going on? are you planning to retire here eventually?
imo, if you’re not planning to stay here permanently, buying a condo doesnt work out. i’m not even sure if you could as a foreigner. anyways, there are also considerable additional costs you have to think of like taxes, insurance, management fee, repair/renovation costs. are you sure you want to spend that much money, time and energy for that?
This is what I was going to say about it. Would have been a good investment 5-8 years ago, but the price has already skyrocketed since then. Especially now that the MRT is open and they are opening more of the outlet mall.
Actually, I wanted to move to this area a couple of years ago, but for the same price I’m paying now, it was just a really small one bedroom apartment without parking. Sure, it was brand new, but it was tiny! I think in the near future it will become a hot area, but might be too late for investing.
If nothing significantly changes in Taiwan (geopolitically), I expect that I will always have a reason to be there at least part of the year. I like my “creature comforts” - so my idea is that buying a place and getting the things in there that I like would be better long-term, rather than renting.
What I was told is significantly different than what you and @Yang_Gui_Zi are saying. I was told that recently the prices in that location have gone down because of over-supply, and the area not becoming as hot as the developers originally thought.
How recent is your 10M NTD number? Clearly that is much higher than I thought. For that I would probably want to live lot closer to Taipei center.
What is the property tax in Taiwan for condos? And approximately what would insurance cost for say a 10M NTD Condo? Just ballpark figures would be great. thanks much.
Actually, this does make a lot of sense. Keep in mind that I was looking a couple of years ago. The outlet mall had just opened and the MRT hadn’t started running yet. However, it seems the housing is developing much faster than the commercial in that area. There are a ton of brand new high-occupancy condo/apartment buildings and still more going up.
And you’re right about the area not becoming as hot as originally expected. The local buzz was that the outlet prices weren’t really that cheap and apparently some of the items were specifically made just for outlet stores. So the crowd there died down pretty quickly.
I still feel like it will be a nice area. There’s a large park with a lake, the HSR, MRT, baseball stadium, some shopping (with more to come, including a movie theater).
But I imagine the condos still are not cheap. Check 591 and you can get an idea of how much per ping that area is going for.