Professor Liu Ko-qiang, from National Taiwan University’s Building and Planning Research Foundation, talked to me on housing prices today.
He agreed that the housing prices in Taipei city are unreasonably high in relation to people’s incomes, and that there are complicated reasons behind this.
One major reason is that people here have “overiding aspirations” for owning a house, and they have a strong desire to live close to their parents or children.
Also, people don’t like to rent houses or rent out their own houses, which led to the limited supplies of rental houses.
He says when government officials contemplate bringing down housing prices, they should take all these cultural and social factors into consideration so that they can come up with more effective policies.
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