Is Taipei’s East District Becoming a Ghost Town?
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These landlords are waiting for China to come
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Why would that be so?
“Because something untouched is worth more than if it has had even one tenant in the past, be it women or property.” Not my quote.
An elderly ladyfriend of mine, who owns a few empty apartments, said this when I asked why Kaohsiung has a ghost town in XinZouYing.
Also, nobody is going to off themselves in it if you don’t let anyone in.
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Imagine landlord who rent a place to O-bank in East District for 1.3 million NTD per month. That’s 15.6 million NTD or half million USD per year. He/She doesn’t care if place stays empty for year or two. They accumulated so much money from tose rentals they purchased in 80’s. Millennials can only dream about that
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Agree with BJ. The ones with real wealth are playing the long game. They are absolutely sure that PRC buyers will eventually come and pay more . It’s still puzzling to see the lack of income and costs paying fees don’t factor in … but … their money 
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my rent has never gone up (its already enough as it it) a buddy of mine in beijing has has his rent raised every year since being there. the rents are more expensive in the main citys there for less( shit quality buildings) than here. if thats what they want to happen here then they should be jailed for treason.
as for the article, its true i know a place in ZX fuxing that had to move to another location because the rent was out of order. people should just move their businesses elsewhere and stick it to these greedy assholes. almost every part of taipei is over crowded. come to banqiao, theres half a million people here and its not exactly far from the center of taipei.
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Every Chinese person wants to be a real estate tycoon. Dreaming of being the next Li Ka-Shing.
There is also a bunch of companies who own a lot of real estate, even it’s not their core business. Driving prices up.
At the same time a lot of the buildings are old and dirty. Landlords are too cheap to spend a penny on them and expect everything to come from the renters.
Trying to bargain the price with these people, is like hitting a brick wall. So it is only natural a lot of places will be empty, and it will only become worse, the government should install penalties to owners who keep their property empty for longer periods of time.
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My question is: why will the Chinese pay a gazillion zillion for something they can take for free?
Just like the KMT did before them with Japanese era stuff whether private or public, just like any dictatorship: just accuse the owner of being a rebel and voila, the land/building is yours. The law does not exist under a dictatorship, the officials take what they want…just as someone will use that raking against them to take the stuff and so on and so forth…
The Taiwanese landlords are still outsiders…
If we fall under the China bus, in the best case scenario they have 50 years to speculate…who will buy and why? Better air quality? Cheaper prices is what drives people.
More importantly, the Chinese people are buying outside to get out of the Party`s control. Why would they buy here then?
The only salvation is to sell early to State owned corporations seeking to destabilize Taiwan. The landlord gets the blood money, the silver coins are inherited to the next generation which is in the US, preparing to take that over too…
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I think the PRC would use private companies to buy property to increase their soft power. Maybe for the regular folks, they could buy property as a retired plan. But it seems most of the Chinese would consider different places imho, like Canada, USA, and Europe… Still if even a small percentage of China people would be interested; it could still represent a considerable amount. But overall I don’t think most regular folks, especially younger generations, in China care much about living in Taiwan.
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Most of us - as well as the writer of this article - don’t make 100 000 NT$ per month.
But we feel the need and the ability to question others who do
Here we are talking about owners who own millions and billions.
Using a proportional approach, to wonder why ‘they’ don’t rent out their property,
is similar to wonder why you don’t rent out your bicycle when you don’t use it.
Do you care? No… They don’t, either. Hehehe
Sooner or later, Chinese money will come and buy it,
In order to make Taiwan the ‘Cote d’Azur’ or the ‘Miami’ of China
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Having empty stores does affect everyday life, as the article states, and it will affect the resale value in the long run. Empty stores -> less customers -> more stores closing down -> more empty stores -> … Also people shop on the internet these days so the value of storefronts is decreasing everywhere.
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is that really a thing here? theres like 20 shopping malls in xinyi and they all seem to be full all the time.
i’ve noticed a few dead ones though. the giant ball one north of sun yat sen hall is pretty dead. kinda weird that place. the Hi mall in banqiao has always been full of people selling shoes and the FE21 in banqiao seems pointless as they built mega city round the corner.
and chinese the bubble is even worse than here, its a complete and utter shambles. welcoming such a thing to taiwan is just demented. if that ever happens i’m outta here.
Those have been dead for years. People only want to go to new ones.
That’s what Vancouver did to good success. Those poor landlords being forced to rent out their mansions to the plebs for a song or else they got hit with very punitive empty house taxes. My heart bleeds.
I bet if they tried that in Taiwan there would be a revolt from the rich landlords. Not to mention many of the politicians have vested interest in keeping their investments high.
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Hey guys, don’t hate on the wealth creators, or @Andrew0409 will give you an earful! 
But for people who already have enough money to afford not to care about prices, air quality is a stronger motivator (unless they’re the kind of rich people who will always think of themselves as poor no matter how much they have, or they grew up thinking air is supposed to smell bad and don’t want to listen to “new” ideas).
Shh, I’m afraid @finley might hear you!
And then we get the Rich Dad Poor Dad concept of real estate fortune.
I get his perspective but millenials got no chance in building that type of business from zero now, at least not in Taipei with the graduate local salaries and house prices
There is no over statement in that. Dinners with rich locals is 99% talk about that and how they are letting the property empty and holding the rental prices up high. Deep pocket it is. The number of empty properties is like a hunt trophy on dinner tables. The other 1% is about the food.
Isn’t there a vacancy tax for business properties in Hong Kong?
Like the rich real estate monguls at the dinner table, who just ate 7k per person in a dinner but are too old to drive and don’t want pay a driver, never mind even paying a taxi. Uber surge? Sacrilegious!
Nah, not the same thing at all. The point is these apartments are empty, not just partly unused. These speculators often own several of them. There are entire buildings going up whose entire purpose is to be sold off piecemeal to speculators. It’s all a huge game, funded by cheap loans.
The closest metaphor would be for the government to give subsidies to rich people if they agree to take 10% of all the bicycles being made. Although that doesn’t work well because you can always increase bicycle output, so prices aren’t as volatile. Houses are limited by land area.