Taipei - Post Report Question and Answers
What is your housing like? What are typical housing sizes, locations, and commute times for expatriates?
Housing is made up of mostly 3 bedroom apartments in Neihu, Dazhi, Tianmu, and Daan. It's pretty spread out and the size and facilities vary greatly. The biggest challenge is deciding on living close to AIT (Neihu) or close to the schools in Tianmu. If the former, the kids have an hour bus ride. If the latter, you have a 45 min commute to work. If you live in Dazhi, kids still have a long bus ride but the commute to AIT is shorter. Our building's facilities are nice. They include a green space, indoor swimming pool, kids play room, gym, library. There's a park next door and you can walk to shopping and restaurants. There's an MRT stop a 10 min walk away and access to several buses. The apartments are small compared to US standards but big for Taiwan and there isn't much storage. The facilities are supposed to make up for the small size. - Apr 2023
We live in the Neihu/Dazhi area in a high-rise apartment, (3 bed, 3 bath) with amenities such as a lounge, pool/sauna/kiddy pool, gym, toddler play room, library and kids’ library. It is next to a park with a small playground where people do tai chi in the mornings and walk/run/jog around our block since it has wide sidewalks and shade. It is about a 10 minute drive or 20 min MRT subway ride to AIT and 20-30 minute drive to Taipei American School (TAS) and 20 min subway ride to downtown. - Jul 2020
We live in a single family home with a very large fenced yard in Yangmingshan (YMS). All other housing is in apartments. The homes in YMS are large, between three and five bedrooms, three to five bathrooms, large living rooms, plus an extra nanny/maid room. The homes have fireplaces and large US-style kitchens and ovens. The tile in the bathrooms and kitchen is a little dated, but the homes are well-built and have new windows and solar-powered water heaters. The street the homes are on is a cul-de-sac so there is very little traffic and the neighborhood kids often ride bikes and play outside together. In the past apartments were quite small, minimalist with little storage, but the budget has been increasing and now AIT rents several new apartments in Tianmu and Neihu that are three or four bedrooms. They offer bunk beds for large families living in apartments. The AIT office building has been scheduled to move to Neihu from Da’an for several years, though still has not moved due to many challenges of aligning the high volume of disparate demands from different government agencies involved in both building a new facility and physically moving the office. Commute times to the current building in Da'an range from a ten minute walk for people who live in Da'an to 20-30 mins for people in Dazhi and Neihu and 40 minutes for people in Tianmu and Yangmingshan. When the commute changes to Neihu, it will be about the same for Tianmu and YMS and Dazhi, longer for Da'an, and shorter for Neihu. - Dec 2018
You can find all kinds - big and small apartments in serviced flats with pools and recreational facilities, townhouses, houses with gardens, all either furnished or unfurnished. We pay about 1,200 USD for a nice 3-storey townhouse near the MRT, five subway stops north of Main Station. With the subway system being so great, location is not very important, since you can go anywhere fast and cheap, but proximity to an MRT station is recommend when choosing a place to live, although that will be reflected in the rent price.
For some reason most expats choose to live in TianMu, which is comfortable, and it is where the two main international schools are located, but it's not the cheapest or most central part of the city to live in. It's a bit of an expat bubble, although expats are still a small minority there. - Jul 2018
I lived in the Dunhua apartments and loved it. As a single, I was given a 3-bedroom 2-bathroom apartment (guest bathroom also had a bathtub) with a large kitchen and living area. The apartments are modern and clean- in my whole time in Taiwan I never saw one bug. There is a gym with basic equipment, and a recreational room that you can reserve for parties. It is close to everything and often served as the meeting point for my friends and I on the weekends before going out in the city. Trash can be placed outside of your door every Monday-Friday for disposal by the building staff (which is actually a big perk since people who do not live in serviced apartment buildings have to go outside at designated times to catch the garbage truck certain day during the week).
Downside: many of the apartments face an office building on one side, so one of my bedroom windows and all of my living room windows look directly into the office building. - Mar 2017
Other than a few houses available on Yangmingshan Mountain, it is all apartment living. Apartments are smaller than in many other countries. Housing areas are located downtown, near the schools or near the NOC. - Nov 2016
Some houses on Yangmingshan mountain, former U.S. military housing. But it's about 45 minutes from downtown. Many people like to live by the 'American' school in Tienmu. Apartments are nice, but smaller than what most people are used to, so every fall there are several appeals to the housing board, until people realize how expensive housing is here and that no, other people are not living in larger housing than what they have. Same as with Dazhi and Neihu, newer neighborhoods closer to the new AIT site that will be in use in 2017 or 2018. And some people of course like living in downtown. - Sep 2015
Housing is mostly apartments with a few stand-alone houses with yards in Yangmingshan. People with large families sometimes like the houses but they are far away from work and a bit isolated from the city. You would definitely need a car. Tienmu is close to the American School and a very western neighborhood, but does not have its own metro stop. Dazhi is a great neighborhood with malls, restaurants, and very close to both hiking and the river biking paths, but apartments are smaller. Dazhi housing is the closest to the metro stop and is a 30 minute commute to work on the metro. There are also some apartments downtown but not necessarily close to work. A lot of single people live downtown but there are also some large apartments for families. - Aug 2015
Housing is spread around the city, but there is an effort to find more units near the new office compound, in the Northern part of the city, in Dazhi or Neihu with an easy 30 minute commute door-to-door. Many singles and couples still live downtown. Families tend to be in Tienmu, near the American School. No metro access in this area means you may be more isolated, however, and I wouldn't recommend it for singles. Some families perfer the seperate houses in Yangmingshan, though it's a long ways from work. Most people are happy with their housing, or seem to be. The most common complaint would be size and lack of storage space. Still, the ease of moving around the city in cheap taxis or the Metro make everything accessable. People seem to really like the Dazhi neighborhood becuase it is close to parks and outdoor space, with an easy commute to work or the American School. There will likely be a lot of retail and restaurants in this area soon, but most are still under development. - Apr 2015
Housing is downtown (singles and families without school aged children)- 5 minute commute 80NT cab ride, Dazhi (singles and some families) -20-30 minutes ride on the MRT for 18NT, Tienmu (4-5 family members) and Yangminshan (big families) both use the AIT shuttle for US$2.70 each way. - Sep 2013
AIT is working to move more people towards the New Office Compound in the Neihu neighborhood. So they are placing more singles and couples in the Dazhi neighborhood, whereas they had previously been assigned downtown. Commute time from Dazhi to either new or old AIT is 20-30 minutes. Families live in Tienmu or on the mountain, Yang Ming Shan. There is an AIT shuttle for these, but the commute is still an hour, one way. - Jul 2013
State Department housing varies from 3-5 bedroom houses with yards on Yangmingshan, to large apartments in TienMu, to smaller (but nice) apartments downtown. I live on Yangmingshan. It is 45 minutes to AIT. From TienMu it is 30 minutes. AIT provides a shuttle and public transportation is easy. - May 2013
Lots of apartments in the cities. If one is with AIT, they have apartments near AIT, apartments in Tienmu and then some 3-5 bedroom, single-family houses on Yangmingshan. The commute from Tienmu is about 30 minutes, from Yangmingshan, 45 minutes. - May 2012
Very spacious and modern. Housing is scattered across the city, but most families live on Yangmingshan Mountain (30-40 minute commute to the city) in well-maintained houses with yards. Couples and singles are housed closer to AIT (20-30 minute walk) in the Da-An district. Tienmu is another housing location set in the foothills of Yangmingshan with one of the biggest concentrations of ex-pats in the city - close to the schools. - Jun 2009
