With a massive garden and a beautiful house, I’d buy a picture of the sea for the wall.
Look at all those ugly toutian!
Thanks guys for teaching me this useful vocabulary! 
Guy
You can get a beautiful flat on the seafront in Brighton for far less than that. Brighton is under an hour away from London but has such a vibrant and bustling economy, full of jobs and things to do, that it’s not dependent on London anyway.
I was thinking more of a 60-80 ping two floor house with yard for around 12 million NT$, I don’t think that’s possible in Brighton.
You might get a two bed / two bathroom flat with a distant Seaview or corner view for that.
Don’t get me wrong- I’d much prefer to live in Brighton, just saying it is possible to pick up places in Taipei or NTC if you are willing to go against the grain…
I’m not sure about the ping conversion, but it’s definitely possible to get a large family-sized house with a front and back garden close to the main train station in Brighton for a lot less than half a million. Such homes don’t exist on the seafront itself, but they’re walking distance for sure. On the seafront, you could definitely get a large flat for much less than half a million though. (I’m looking at examples on a real estate website while typing this.)
Yes, but 12 million NT is 360K pounds. And it’s a house (not flat) . And sea view (not just walking distance or near to sea)
No doubt what you say in Brighton is also true!
You said 20 mil in ya first post.
Well you said well under 20 mil.
I agree that there are bigger, nicer houses outside the cities. My wife wouldn’t even consider it though. So sad.
This is a sign of a bubble, and is exactly what caused China’s ghost cities. Houses built in the middle of nowhere and bought by lower-end investors, ft propose of saying they own a house.
How can it rise in value? Average house prices in the country rise, therefore these investment properties rise by the same amount - on paper at least
Then after 5 years if the average price of houses has risen by 20%, then you can sell for 15% more than you bought it for (i.e 5% under theoretical market price) to another investor as a “bargain”.
On a side note, I was recently looking at apartments and it was scary how many I saw that had never been lived in. In fact many had been built 5+ years ago and had never even been developed after being built - just an empty room will no walls, no upper floor, and electrical sockets hanging out. Sad really.
A place to park savings.
It’s an incredibly inefficient way to use land and resources (esp carbon intensive concrete and other materials).
Guy
Exactly
Also the stock market typically outperforms real estate - greatly so in the past few years. So it’s not even an optimal place to put spare cash.
Depends on what your goals are. I have a big family and bought a house for each of my kids. I doubt in 10-20 years when they be at the age to consider buying they’d get a better deal, especially since the properties have all doubled in value since I got them. They aren’t sitting empty either. Other people are paying above my mortgage. Seems like a win/win.
You declaring the rental income and providing official receipts to your renters?
Just be aware the situation looks a wee bit different from below.
Guy
Most European capitals or big cities on the coast I could get a sea view , nice house an hour out. It’s feasible .
It’s pretty sad alright as construction is a huge contributor to greenhouse gases. Dig up riverbeds and mountains , use enormous amounts of fossil fuels to place concrete over farmland .
They also heat up the land , the more concrete they put on them. Taiwan and much of Asia has no clue environmentally. And the city managers themselves have no clue with no idea about heat mitigation or carbon or pollution reduction. Very backwards. Since I arrived in Taiwan it’s just been getting hotter and hotter especially in the north. A fair amount of that is the heat island effect. All the incentives are wrong.
I bought a house for each of my pet turtles. Long term vision.
Some people are thinking about this.
Check out the work of NTUT (the uni at the intersection of Taipei City’s Zhongxiao East Road and Xinsheng South Road), as it is discussed here:
I hope we see more of this, and more trees—we’ll need it.
Guy
Real estate is far superior to the stock market (if looking at 5 years+). Better returns, rental income, plus leveraging through mortgages. You can’t invest 25k in the stock market and get the returns off of a 100k investment, you just get returns on the 25k. Plus no one is paying you back monthly for that 25k investment in the meantime.
I was seriously shocked reading some of the stuff in this thread. People have their heads in the sand.
I think realistically a decent 3 bed 2 bath + parking starts at 1.5 million USD now in Taipei.
Depends on the Real estate market. You’re throwing out a lot of generalizations. And yes you can invest 25k in stock market and get 2000% returns, for example if you bought NIO in Feb 2020 you would have made 2000% that year. Amazon has been returning a consistent 80% year over year for many years now minus this year which is so far at about 12.6% 9 months in. Rental yields in Taipei are shit and won’t even cover half the mortgage even if it is 1.5% so it’ll be entirely appreciation that one has to hope for. The one positive side real estate has going for it is being able to borrow a mortgage and hope you don’t buy during a bubble as I know many people did in 2006. I do agree that a well timed mortgage on a quick rising real estate market is nearly unbeatable, unless you bought NIO last summer