Real estate bargain hunters have 'ghost' of chance in Taipei

This is why many of them pounce during “ghost month” — the seventh month in the Chinese lunar calendar — when their superstitious elders over 50 shy away from the market and bargains are more easily found.

“Our data shows that young people wait specifically for ghost month to buy a residential property,” said Jessica Hsu, director of H&B Realty's market research division. “They know they'll have a larger selection and be better positioned in price negotiations.”

According to a Taiwanese folk belief, the gates of the netherworld open during ghost month - which falls this year from Aug. 10 to Sept. 7 — allowing ancestral ghosts to mingle with the living.

Since the ghosts can bring bad luck, it is best to be careful and to stay on their good side. Superstitious people make offerings to appease them, and avoid getting married, swimming, traveling, seeing a doctor and buying a car or home during this time.

Ghost month has a noticeable effect on Taiwan's economy every year. While car and home purchases drop, sales of products used as offerings jump by double-digit percentages. Among the most popular offerings placed on altars in front of Taipei apartments are biscuits, instant noodles, canned food and beer.

In response to the ghost month doldrums in their industry, real estate agents cut back on advertising in August by 45 percent. Hsu regards twenty-somethings' fearlessness in the face of ancestral spirits as a sign of deep social change.

“With the increasing industrialization of society, people are becoming less superstitious,” she said.

Behind the recent rapid rise of real estate prices in Taipei is the landmark trade agreement signed in June between Taiwan and China, which have been governed separately since the end of a civil war in 1949.

The prospective inflow of Chinese capital has made Taipei apartments attractive to speculators. Though considerable restrictions still exist, mainland Chinese can now buy land and buildings in Taiwan. Expressly prohibited from owning real estate are members of the People's Liberation Army and the Communist Party of China.

Taiwan businessmen who have made fortunes running factories in China are seen as the main drivers of real estate prices. Enticed back to the island by low taxes, super-rich tycoons like Foxconn founder Terry Guo often buy dozens of residential buildings in one go.

Electronics giant Foxconn International Holdings Ltd manufactures Apple Inc.'s iPod and iPhone, among other products, in factories in China.

In the view of one real estate agent, it is the businessmen's wives, not the businessmen themselves, who are the cause of soaring prices. “The men do business in China and the women play Monopoly with Taipei real estate because they're bored,” said the agent, who asked to remain anonymous.

A month of calm would surely do the overheated market good. But as most young Taiwan couples, despite the prices, prefer risking ghostly ire in Taipei to settling down in a faceless satellite city far from the capital, a major cooling of the market is not expected.

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