House price data now available online

The new website — http://etp.cpami.gov.tw — was launched by the Construction & Planning Administration (CPA) under the MOI at 9:30 p.m. yesterday for consumers and real estate agents to get the average housing transaction prices at specific locations for reference.

CPA officials said there is no way to force mandatory disclosure of housing transaction prices before the rules in the Statute for Real Estate Transaction Administration are revised by the Legislative Yuan.

But the CPA has amassed more than 40,000 batches of average housing transaction prices derived from 250,000 deals nationwide during the period from the third quarter of 2007 and the final quarter of last year while safeguarding the privacy of individuals involved in the deals.

The prices listed on the Web pages are based on the financial data related to the housing loans gathered by the Joint Credit Information Center (JCIC) which was established with the assistance of the ROC Bankers Association.

The officials emphasized that while the data does not contain “exact” transaction prices, it is the best “approximate” information available for reference.

It is impossible to get all exact prices when some transactions were carried out in cash, they said.

The average unit transaction prices per ping (36 square feet) at different districts are arranged on a scale in a decimal system so that consumers and realty agents can cross reference prices, they explained.

The CPA will continue building up the data by adding the latest transaction figures every quarter. Figures for the first two quarters of this year should be available by October.

Officials at the Consumers Foundation said the government efforts to provide more housing transaction data are worth encouraging.

But the government should take further steps, including integrating other data like the actual housing transaction prices settled through realty agents and the data gathered by the land administration offices, they said.

Some scholars said the MOI's move meant well, although the data is unlikely to give consumers real help.

Yet executives at most realty agencies welcomed the new housing transaction data covering the whole country.

All leading realty agencies have been building up their own market data for customers. But it would be incomplete when they cannot acquire creditable housing transaction data at areas where they maintain no branch offices, they said.

They said data provided by the government agency with the most extensive coverage of the market will help promote fair transaction prices for both sellers and buyers, they added.

Meanwhile, the number of apartments and houses changing hands in June declined by 3.3 percent to 34,893 cases islandwide, according to the MOI statistics.

Taipei County was the only area that saw a slight increase of 0.3 percent or 25 cases to 9,661 housing units while Taipei City registered a steep decrease of 349 cases.

Most analysts expect the market will continue shrinking in July as a result of measures taken by the Central Bank of China to dampen the speculation on the realty market.

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