'Difficult' picked as 2024 housing market word of the year

Taipei, Dec. 3 (CNA) The word that best represents this year's housing market is "difficult," chosen by about 45.3 percent of people who participated in an online vote, Taiwan Housing Trend Center said in a statement Tuesday.

The center held an online vote for the 2024 real estate market word of the year, with the first round of voting conducted among real estate agents and the second round including the general public, to select the top 10 representative words and top 10 news stories related to the housing market.

Taiwan Trend Center CEO Chang Hsu-lan (張旭嵐) said that due to the launch of a new housing loan program targeted at young homebuyers, the housing market boomed from last year to early this year.

However, the central bank announced a new round of housing market credit controls in the third quarter of the year to address Taiwan's hot property market and crack down on housing speculation. As a result, the hot housing market turned cool and buying sentiment took a turn for the worse, Chang added.

She indicated that the 2022 representative word of the year for the housing market was "rise" when the world entered a cycle of interest rate increases and Taiwan's central bank raised interest rates four times.

In 2023 when the central bank raised interest rates a fifth time as housing prices, commodity prices and interest rates all moved higher, "rise" again came out on top of the representative words for the year's housing market, Chang said.

This year, inflation has surged and housing prices across Taiwan continue to increase. Although the central bank paused interest rate rises, credit control policies have tightened mortgage conditions and made it more "difficult" for homebuyers to buy a home, Chang added.

Taiwan Housing Trend Center also picked the top 10 real estate news stories. Up to 60 percent of online voters selected the central bank's seventh round of credit controls as the top news event, followed by news about a money shortage facing banks and people receiving mortgage loans with rates as high as 3 percent.

Ranking third is the preferential mortgage program geared toward young adults to prevent speculation.

The voting and the vote tallies were conducted from Oct. 25 to Nov. 22, with 1,448 samples collected, according to the statement.