Taiwanese investors put $500 million into Phoenix property near TSMC

Dozens of Taiwanese investors packed a conference room in Taipei for sessions on US tax rules, rental housing and cultural differences in north Phoenix, Bloomberg reported. Brokers say the first question on any tract is how close it sits to TSMC.

Investors from Taiwan have deployed about $500 million in Phoenix-area real estate since 2021, a scale the Greater Phoenix Economic Council puts on par with Canadian capital in the region. Taicoon Property Partners paid $88 million for two parcels about a 10-minute drive from the campus, beating a local developer. The firm plans a mixed-use project of roughly $1 billion with employee housing and a retail center aimed at Taiwanese brands.

Wang Hai-Chien, Taicoon's chief executive, said investors had watched property near TSMC plants outperform in Taiwan and expect the same in Arizona. Bloomberg reported that Starlux and China Airlines now fly nonstop between Taipei and Phoenix, and that Taiwan opened an economic and cultural office in the state capital this year.

Home and industrial prices

Zillow data put average home values in North Gateway and Desert View up about 53% over the past six years, against 42% citywide. Properties near the fab also held up better than the city during the post-pandemic correction.

Industrial vacancy shows the demand. Colliers International put northwest suburbs vacancy at 8% in June, down from 16% a year earlier. The wider Phoenix metro tightened by only about two percentage points over the same stretch.

Suppliers and housing

Suppliers are moving in behind TSMC. Mack Real Estate Group and McCourt Partners plan seven Class A buildings totaling more than 780,000 sq ft next to the campus, CRE Daily reported. Belfiore Analytics counts 3,300 homes planned in one area west of the campus, the most development there since the early 2000s.

Howard Hughes is pushing Teravalis, a 37,000-acre master-planned community that could eventually hold more than 110,000 homes. Chief executive David O'Reilly said the developer was already bullish on the area, but TSMC "was the inflection point that changed the timeline for commercial development".

Jobs and land

TSMC employs about 3,500 people in Arizona and plans to hire 2,500 more. The company has projected it will need 6,000 employees to support its first three fabs.

TSMC picked Phoenix in 2020 for its first US advanced manufacturing site. The campus covers 2,000 acres. It announced an additional $100 billion in March 2025 for three more fabs, two advanced packaging plants and a research center. Fab 1 has run volume production of 4nm chips since late 2024.

CRE Daily reported that land is the constraint: TSMC bought about 900 acres at NorthPark, cutting that project's planned homes by roughly 20%. Groundwater and state-land rules limit how much new housing the area can absorb.

Water is the other constraint. TSMC's published plans describe an industrial water reclamation plant scheduled for 2028. The company says it will allow recycling of 90% or more of its water, with an initial approach using about 65% recycled water from internal systems. Those are company plans, not independently confirmed results.