Taiwan Financial Asset Service Corporation (TFASC) will put up the upfront capital and handle end-to-end project management for homeowners who want to carry out urban renewal themselves — good news for owners of ageing properties, and a new source of competitive pressure for the developers who have long dominated urban renewal.

• TFASC charges a service fee of only 4% to 5% and takes no share of the housing or land, so owners retain the development profit and remain in control.
• The average building age nationwide has reached 34 years, with roughly 5.5 million homes over 30 years old, pointing to enormous demand for urban renewal.
• Of the urban renewal projects approved over the past six years, 94% were joint developments with builders, in which landowners gave up 30% to 50% of the profit; self-led renewal accounted for just 6%.
• The first memorandum of understanding was signed with the Heping Riverside Mall project in Kaohsiung's Gushan District, a 2,530-ping site planned for three 24-storey towers with total sales of about NT$13 billion.
• Services cover financial modelling, applications for government subsidies, bank financing and trust arrangements, and project management. In the initial phase, TFASC will only take on renewal associations that are legally established and have secured majority consent.

Outlook: One project in Taipei has already been signed and several more are under discussion, so the number of self-led urban renewal cases is expected to rise noticeably. Actual results will depend on whether the upfront funding can hold out until bank financing is in place.