Deep discounts are finally moving high-end Taipei apartments, which is good for buyers but a sign of real pain for developers.

• A well-known luxury tower on Taipei's Zhongxiao East Road sold five units in a month after cutting prices to about three-quarters of its old peak per-unit price.
• Every sale this year has come in below the level that all earlier deals cleared, and none of the recent buyers took a parking space.
• Government efforts to cool speculation are squeezing builders: tighter land loan limits, deadlines to start construction, a ban on flipping presale contracts, and much lower lending against unsold units.
• A hoarding tax that can push rates on unsold inventory more than threefold is hitting developers still sitting on empty apartments hardest.
• Several of the units sold were held in trust under a family company tied to a media group chairman, not by ordinary owners.

Outlook: Small token discounts no longer work, so expect more top-end Taipei projects to reprice sharply lower to relieve financial pressure.