Name: Young Taiwanese turn away from housing market as prices spike | ABC News
Uploaded: 2024-07-08T09:32:27.000Z
Duration: 2 min 50 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

A daily ritual for newlyweds Chen Youliu and Cheng Weiyou as they hunt for their perfect first home.

Currently, the biggest issue we're facing is the housing prices.

Typically, finding a house within our budget means it's either quite old or the commute is difficult.

Taipei's house prices are among the least affordable in the world.

This renovated two-bedroom apartment in central Taipei has a price tag of around 1.4 million Australian dollars.

Realtor Steven Yu says a government tax scheme designed to calm the property market after the last boom made things worse during the pandemic.

If you want to sell the house, you'll be taxed 45% for the first couple of years.

So that means the supply, the people they want to wait out three to five years to sell the house.

So there's a shortage of houses and an influx of new buyers.

However, some young people are disengaging altogether and spending their money on simple pleasures like travel, entertainment or even just a good coffee.

So if I cannot buy a house, I cannot build our family.

And these small pieces of spending make you happy in a very short time and then you just live day by day.

Just like in Australia, home ownership is highly valued in Taiwan.

But for young people in particular, that goal is feeling increasingly out of reach and renting comes with its own set of challenges.

Landlords often keep their property registered as owner-occupied, meaning tenants can't access government subsidies.

So this group is working to matchmake honest landlords with like-minded young renters. 90% or 80% of this market is black market.

Those landlords don't want to pay tax and also they are worried who is living inside.

Performance artist Sen-Chi Wei and Australian dancer Baden Hitchcock live in one of the association's share houses.

The landlord is above board so some of the housemates can claim a rent subsidy.

It's not only about money, yeah, here we get lower price but we get to also create art like as an artist we can use this space.

Sometimes a little creative thinking can go a long way.

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Young Taiwanese turn away from housing market as prices spike | ABC News

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