Happier Abroad Forum Community

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/taipei-ho ... 56975.html

High school teacher I-Chung Huang said he's hunted in vain for a home in Taipei's soaring market for four years, convinced that owning an apartment could help him find a wife.

"Taiwan's young people have learned one thing recently: If we fight, there's a chance of things changing," said Huang, who is still looking for a bride. "But I'm going to try to persuade my next girlfriend to accept that I may rent and not buy an apartment for now."

This is really not so awful.

It is biologically useful behavior.

If you want to f**k, you should want to provide shelter for babies. Period.

Bluebirds are a great example of this.

Males find a suitable home, build a crappy faux-nest, then entice the female. The female comes, chooses the male, then proceeds to tear out the faux-nest, and goes to work building the real one. Later, while she sits on the eggs and nurtures the eggs, he stands guard. Really cute birds to watch.

My point is: owning a home is not an unreasonable requirement. So here are some practical ideas from our brideless friend from Taiwan:

(1) Tell your dad to deed you some land. Then, build a simple, small home on it.

(2) Move to Mainland China. Buy some land from a farmer. Build a home.

(3) Learn photography and develop a Chinese brides business, and post a f***ing link here on HA.

MatureDJ wrote:http://finance.yahoo.com/news/taipei-ho ... 56975.html

High school teacher I-Chung Huang said he's hunted in vain for a home in Taipei's soaring market for four years, convinced that owning an apartment could help him find a wife.

"Taiwan's young people have learned one thing recently: If we fight, there's a chance of things changing," said Huang, who is still looking for a bride. "But I'm going to try to persuade my next girlfriend to accept that I may rent and not buy an apartment for now."

I think if you make decent money, like say NT$75,000-90,000+ (US$2,500-3,000+) with no debt or other obligations, you will be considered reasonable catch financially by majority of Taipeians. Apartments in Taipei are extremely expensive, like pushing US$1 mn for a crappy old 3 bed / 2 bath (standard size) apartment in decent location. But first time home buyers can avail of very low interest mortgages with just a 10-20% downpayment. These are not permanently fixed but interest rates in Taiwan have been very low for a long time already.

If you go out to New Taipei City, there is more new stuff and still a few pockets with lower prices. And if you go down to say Taoyuan less than 50 minutes south and fairly near the international airport, property is still a lot cheaper.

If you date and propose to a sweet down to earth type of girl who is flexible and has common sense (they still exist), I think you could convince her to accept renting. Renting in Taipei is really quite cheap. An apartment which would cost US$1 million to buy can be rented indefinitely for around US$700 per month of it's bare (no furnishings).

The reality is, many young people just do not earn that much and cannot afford to by a place on their own. If they are lucky (and they often are), their folks help out with cost or even give them a place though.

The title of this thread is too broad, since RE prices vary greatly from city to city in Taiwan. It's not reasonable to expect young men to own his own place in Taipei (without parental subsidies), versus places like Yilan (1 hour east of Taipei) is much cheaper and more affordable.