Mainland money backs Taiwan development
Taiwan's first housing project to be built with mainland investment is due to open in 2014, and is attracting buyers from around the world
A developer from Beijing is working on Taiwan's first housing project with investment from the mainland. Two towers, with a hot-spring clubhouse and views of the ocean, are being built in the mountains just north of Taipei despite the island's wariness about opening its property market to a long-time political foe.
Vantone Capital and its Taiwanese partner, Southern Land Development, expect to open the twin 29-storey towers in June 2014. They say the 294 flats are 70 per cent sold.
The project, expected to cost NT$250 million (HK$66.7 million) will sit next to Southern Land's super-high-end "Elite 360" project at the foot of a national park overlooking a sliver of the Taiwan Strait and parts of the urban Taipei basin. Elite 360's 38 units, one per floor, have nearly sold out at prices starting at NT$330,000 per square metre and will be occupied from April.
The new project is drawing ethnic Chinese from around the world, attracted by Taiwan's use of Mandarin, its medical system and its political stability.
Ethnic Chinese from Hong Kong, Beijing, Shanghai and the United States have bought all the flats sold so far at the 594,900 square metre project, Vantone Taipei 2011.
"The Chinese who have lived overseas particularly approve of this model, since they don't like the pressured atmosphere of big cities," said sales manager Kidd Lin.