Homes with a single elderly resident hit record high
By Hsu Yi-ping / Staff reporter
The number of households with a single elderly resident has reached a record high in the second quarter of this year, the latest statistics from the Ministry of the Interior’s Real Estate Information Platform showed .
The number of households with only elderly people increased to 927,500 units in the second quarter, which is an increase of 4,139 units (about 0.4 percent) from the previous quarter, the data showed.
Among them, households with a single elderly resident accounted for about 716,500 units, an increase of 2,900 units from the previous quarter, they showed.
Commercial and residential buildings are pictured in Taipei in an undated photograph.
Photo: Taipei Times
Colliers International owner-occupier services director Huang Shu-wei (黃舒衛) yesterday said that households with a single elderly resident reflected an inevitable demographic shift in Taiwanese society, driven by the trends of declining birthrates, an aging population and nuclear families.
With the surge in artificial intelligence applications, mass-produced caregiving robots allowing people to reduce reliance on human care are becoming widely adopted and accepted, he said.
The trend not only transforms caregiving models, but also drives an urgent demand for urban planning, including implementing universal design, adding barrier-free elevators, and accelerating and deepening the integration between community care and medical resources, Huang said.
Housing Trend Institute chief executive officer Ho Shih-chang (何世昌) said the number of single elderly person households not only shows Taiwan is turning into a super-aged society, but also signals that an increasing number of elderly people are left without support.
Subsequent issues such as elderly care, community mobility and healthcare access are becoming ever more pressing, he said, adding that the social phenomenon is also transforming the real-estate market.
Hospitals were once viewed as undesired facilities, but now “hospital-adjacent homes” have turned into highly sought-after assets, selling quickly on the market, he said.
Meanwhile, the data showed that the total number of households registered nationwide experienced a rare downturn, dropping significantly by 77,800 units from the previous quarter, a decline of about 1 percent.
The total number of registered residential properties nationwide was about 8.025 million units in the second quarter, marking a clear decrease from about 8.103 million units in the first quarter.
In the second quarter, the number of households with a single resident decreased the most among national registered households — dropping to about 2.618 million units in the second quarter from about 2.646 million units in the first quarter, down by 27,500 units, the data showed.
Four-person households saw the second-largest decline, decreasing by about 12,500 units compared with the first quarter, followed by three-person households, which decreased by about 11,400 units in a single quarter.
A real-estate agent said that the total number of registered households saw a rare decline, while the total number of tax-registered residential properties reached about 9.5503 million units in the second quarter — an increase of about 149,100 units compared with the same period last year.
It indicates a growing number of “unregistered residences” — properties with tax registrations, but no registered residents, they said, adding that aside from it being linked to population decline, the trend is quite unusual.
The decline in total single-person households might have resulted from owner deaths due to an aging population, as well as the new “housing hoarding tax” policy, which reduced incentive to maintain multiple registrations, Ho said.
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