Austrians consider the trends in housing costs to be much more problematic, says an survey by IMAS International, conducted on behalf of Erste Bank.
Forty-nine per cent of the 900 interviewees have already found costs over the last five years to have ”risen somewhat”, while 19 per cent have found them to have ”risen a lot”.
Only a third of study participants found that not to be so.
While 77 per cent of Austrians considered housing ”affordable”/”very affordable” in the 1980s, that figure is now only 25 per cent.
Barely 18 per cent think housing will still be affordable in 2030.
Income not rising as fast as property prices
While the actual wages of Austrians have, according to the Austrian Institute of Economic Research (Wifo), only risen by 4.9 per cent since 2015, rent prices, according to the ECB’s consumer price index, have shot up by 15 per cent.
They have indeed become a whopping 27 per cent more expensive in the same time period.
The coronavirus pandemic had a noticeable impact on Austrians’ housing-related desires. While 59 per cent wanted to change their housing situation in February, that figure had dropped to 54 per cent by June.
Austrians still want their own house
The pandemic sparked a notable 7% rise in those wanting to buy their own home, particularly among 18 to 34-year-olds, between February and June 2020.
Twelve per cent of people want to renovate, eleven per cent want to modify their outdoor areas (+3 per cent compared to the start of the year) and eleven percent want to buy their own home (+5%).