Housing need in Austria remains stable

Even with a declining population the housing need in Austria will remain stable. Currently around 40 000 new dwellings are delivered yearly on the Austrian market, this number should remain steady for the next 10 years.

Not necessarily the increase in population, which in future will be much lower than it was the case in the past decades, but rather socio-cultural factors will influence the output of new dwellings in Austria. According to all forecasts regarding the population development the number of single person households and the need for dwellings for small families respectively two persons will increase. Also very popular are secondary residences.

Especially in Vorarlberg, Tirol and Salzburg the development of the housing market will be particularly dynamic due to the higher percentage of young people and the trend to secondary residences. A small increase in the demand for new dwellings will also be registered in Lower Austria, although no longer in the surroundings of Vienna (South and West), where building plots are much harder to come by nowadays. By contrast in the Southern counties Carinthia and Styria the demand for new dwellings will be reduced. Vienna will also see a slight decrease in the demand, although there is a high demand for improvement of accomodation.

Compared to other European countries the housing construction in Austria with 4,5 dwellings per 1 000 inhabitants is pretty high. Only Switzerland (more than 6 dwellings per 1 000 inhabitants) and France (around 5) have a higher housing construction rate than Austria.