Since the start of the pandemic last year, property prices in Austria have continued to increase with no sign of it slowing down yet. prices in the real estate market to keep rising throughout 2021 and interest rates are not expected to increase until 2025. As a result, demand remains high among investors and private buyers with a recent survey by real estate broker Interhyp AG revealing 73 percent of tenants want to own property. This coincides with results from the Property Index 2021 by Deloitte that shows new apartments in Austria are the most expensive in Europe at €4,457 per square metre – an increase of 5.84 percent from last year. This means a 70 square meter apartment costs an average of 10.6 times the national annual salary.
The Austrian National Bank recently warned of overheating in the property market. Landlords are receiving 50 percent more in rent than they were 10 years ago. An increase in rent prices in Austria’s capital city is not restricted to the private sector either, with the municipal sector going up by 23 percent and cooperatives by 29 percent in the past 10 years. However, Innsbruck has been named as the most expensive city in Austria for rent. In Innsbruck, the average rent is €18,80 per square meter. Towns in the east of Austria, such as Jennersdorf in Burgenland, are the cheapest places to rent where people pay less than €7 per square meter. Salzburg is the second most expensive city for rent in Austria at €16,0 per square meter. In July of this year, the average rent price in Austria rose by 1.2 percent due to inflation. The City of Vienna has a rent calculator for tenants to find out if they are paying too much rent and might be due a refund. Rent in Vienna is famously affordable due to rent control rules on buildings built before 1945 which are smaller than 131m2. These high-ceilinged buildings are also known as Altbau. However, experts predict that 80 percent of tenants could be paying too much rent to live in these properties.