People’s willingness to buy and sell houses has increased by more than 70%, and people estimate that house prices will rise another 3%.

Cathay Gold (2882) rose today (22) to announce the results of the latest April “National Economic Confidence Survey”. Although the stock market and economic outlook have declined, in the housing market, people’s willingness to buy and sell houses continues to rise. At the same time, the Cathay Current Affairs Survey found that more than 70% of people estimated that house prices would rise by more than 3%, and 52% of them believed that the price would rise by as much as 3 to 10%, indicating that people are generally bullish on house prices.

Further reading: The stock market boosted the housing market, and home buying in the first quarter hit the second highest level in 13 years

Cathay Financial released the latest survey today. People’s willingness to buy and sell houses has shown a continuous upward trend recently, with the willingness to buy a house rising to -39.8, higher than -39.9 in March; the willingness to sell house index was -1.6, also higher than -6.4 in March.

Cathay Gold’s current affairs topic in April is a survey of people’s changes in housing prices where they live and the impact of housing policies, asking people about their expectations for housing price changes in their place of residence in the next six months. The results showed that a total of 72.2% of the public expected residential prices to increase by more than 3% in the next six months, an increase of 13.8 percentage points from the previous survey.

Among them, 52.1% of the people expected house prices to rise between 3-10%, an increase of 6.8 percentage points from the previous survey; 4.3% expected house prices to fall by more than 3%, a decrease of 6 percentage points from the previous survey. That is to say, there are more bullish views and less bearish views. Overall, people’s expectations for rising house prices are stronger than when the survey was conducted in October last year.

In addition, the Executive Yuan will pass the housing tax differential tax rate 2.0 plan at the end of September 2023, and the Legislative Yuan will pass the third reading in December of the same year. It will be put on the road in July 2024 and the tax collection will begin in May 2025.

Regarding the impact of the House Hoarding Tax 2.0 policy on people’s willingness to buy a house, Cathay Gold’s survey results also show that 62% of people believe that the policy has no impact on their willingness to buy a house. Further analysis shows that 24.1% of those whose current residence is rented will increase their willingness to buy a house due to the House Hoarding Tax 2.0, which is higher than 19.1% of the entire population. However, 24.1% of those whose current residence is owned or “shared” will increase their willingness to buy a house. 22.1% will reduce their willingness to buy a house as a result, which is higher than the 18.9% of the entire population.

This survey by Cathay Gold was conducted from April 1 to 7, 2024. An email questionnaire was sent to members of Cathay Life’s official website and customers of Cathay World Bank, and a total of 14,969 valid questionnaires were successfully collected.

• Yahoo Finance special correspondent Ye Yiru: With more than 20 years of experience in mainstream financial media, from the Web1.0 bubble in 2000 to the Meta Yuanverse Web3.0, he has witnessed the rise and fall of Taiwan’s large and small business groups, and has experienced five international financial crises. We believe that finance is life and is everywhere. No matter how difficult financial knowledge is, we should explain it in a simple way. Everyone, young and old, should manage money. If you don’t manage money, money will not care about you.