Low Point in Residential Construction: Building Permits in New Buildings Declining Sharply

This means that housing construction activity in Austria has fallen to its lowest point since 2010, as calculated by Statistics Austria on Thursday. Around 40,000 fewer approved apartments were registered than in the record year of 2017. In the coming years, a significant decline in new apartments is expected, while the population continues to rise.

Statistics Austria Director General Tobias Thomas stated in a release: In 2024, the construction of 51,473 apartments was approved, 32,100 of them in new buildings. 44 percent of the total apartments approved for construction are in new residential buildings with three or more apartments, and 18 percent in new residential buildings with one or two apartments. From 2014 to 2024, the number of building permits for new constructions decreased by 37 percent.

Viennese Developers Often Build Outside Vienna

According to Statistics Austria, the second largest share of building permits is for apartments through additions, extensions, and conversions in existing buildings (38 percent). In 2024, 19,373 apartments in this category were approved nationwide, 7,112 of them in Vienna.

The statisticians point out an interesting aspect: "While in almost all Austrian federal states there is a high correlation between the residence of private developers and the location of their construction project, Vienna stands out. In 2024, only 43 percent of developers from Vienna also lived in the same federal state where they had their single or two-family house built." For comparison: In the other federal states, this correlation was between 88 percent in Salzburg and 99 percent in Carinthia and Vorarlberg.

Most apartments in new buildings are unsurprisingly being built in Vienna with over 9,000, followed by Lower Austria with just over 5,000 and Upper Austria with just under 5,000.

(APA/Red)

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