Beware of Fellow Foreigners Peddling their (used) Wares
Beware of foreigners peddling their (used) wares!
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| A Tsou aboriginal woman in Alishan wearing traditional clothes |
What foreigners don't know can cost them
Newly arrived foreigners are at a significant disadvantage. They lack experience in their new home, they often lack language and cultural skills and they lack local knowledge generally. This is a recipe that can lead to being taken. What follows is a sort of a warning for expats to be wary of their fellow expat, when it comes to buying things or business dealings. |
| A pagoda located near Shimen Dam in Taoyuan |
Unfortunately, they're often not. Very often, in fact, foreigners offer their stuff at prices substantially over the local used market price. In some blatant examples, I've seen second-hand items being offered for sale at or very near new prices. Actually, I can remember one person selling a pair of locally made, cheap couches for more than they cost new. I know this because I own a pair of them myself.
Differences in used markets, west and east
I think many expats are unaware of just how weak the local market for used items is. Most locals would rather buy new when possible. There's no prestige (the ubiquitous "face" you may have heard about) in a used item. Also, there is a tendency to distrust those selling a used item. The mindset is "why would someone want to get rid of a perfectly good item?" The implication is that sellers are trying to offload broken or worn out things onto unsuspecting buyers; otherwise, why would they want to get rid of them? A further point is that many locally made-- or especially Made in China-- common household items are low quality to start with. Who knows how long a "亞普" brand electric fan is going to last? Buying a used one is like asking for a house fire. As a consequence, second-hand markets are weak and prices tend to be low.
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| Drone shot of city lights and light trails from cars at dusk |
Cars and locals getting in on the act
Used cars are another area where foreigners are used to higher prices. Among locals, a car is a prestige item as much as it is a tool for transportation, sometimes even more so. The older a car is, the less face it has to offer to its owner. So, the market for used cars is not particularly strong... unless you want to buy one from a foreigner, that is. Foreign car sale posts are kind of hilarious. They'll tell you how they cared for their car like no local would and much money in extras they put into it, as if any of that changes the market value for their jalopy. This surely justifies a price quite a bit higher than market for their 15-year-old Ford.
Locals must be getting wind of the willingness of laowai to pay more for clunkers. If you scan some of the Taiwan English language sale groups on Facebook, you'll see offers from locals in amongst the foreign sellers. That locals would take the extra effort to struggle with a foreign language and try to sell their cars to a tiny community of foreigners tells you something: There must be more money to be made selling lemons to foreigners than locals!
Businesses
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| Local Seller of water chestnuts |
Be careful buying businesses from foreigners. These can be really overvalued as well. I once had a foreigner try to sell me a restaurant he'd opened with his local wife about a year or so before. He'd opened it on a roughly 200,000nt loan from his in-laws, or approx. a little over 6500USD as I write this. He wanted me to buy it for 1.5 million nt, or nearly 50,000USD! Nice money if you can get it! He tried to justify it with intangibles, like name recognition and clients. Thing is, he was just a foreigner with a little restaurant in a small rented space.
What many foreigners don't know is that the average hole-in-the-wall eatery in Taiwan, not including Michelin star rated places in downtown Taipei -- obviously, is only worth the total second-hand value of its kitchen equipment and furniture. If the restaurant owns the building, then its value is the real estate. The reason for the low value is the low barrier to entry into the restaurant business in Taiwan. It's easy for anyone to do and most Taiwanese would rather open their own than pay someone else for their existing one, especially if the price does not include the building. Resale is weak in all but the best performing restaurants. The foreigner who tried to sell me his restaurant ended up being able to sell it to someone for around what he paid to open it.
But restaurants are not the worst. I've seen foreigners trying to sell night market stands, which are essentially the Asian equivalent of tables at the flea market, for silly amounts of money. I even met one guy who wanted to make a business out of selling imported foods. The source for these "imports?" Costco. He was looking for partners and investors. Gave it a miss.
Be informed and don't get taken
The best way to avoid over paying for things is to have some idea of the market for what you're buying. Check out local auction sites, like Yahoo Auctions Taiwan or Ruten (ruten.com.tw), and see what your item goes for normally on the local market. Check out local used car websites like 8891.com.tw to find out what the average price is for a car of the same make, year and mileage as the one being offered for sale. Enlist the help the of locals you trust to help out. Honestly, in many cases, you'd be better off just using local auction sites or local connections to acquire whatever it is you want than even looking at buying it from a foreigner (or waiting until the foreigner's imminent departure causes him to slash his prices). In a conversation with a friend recently, I exclaimed, "I'm not going to fund a foreigner's plane ticket home by purchasing an over-priced, cum-stained IKEA mattress!" You shouldn't either.
I agree with a lot of this article.
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