Rising interest rates, stricter lending guidelines, high inflation and general uncertainty have led to a decline in real estate sales last year – minus 10.3 percent to 146,526 transactions. Nevertheless, the recorded sales value increased by a total of 1.9 percent to 44 billion euros, which was particularly due to apartment buildings and lakeside properties, which increased significantly in value, bucking the trend, shows an analysis by the real estate agent network Remax.
The economic and political environment led to lower demand, significantly higher supply and a flattening of the price curve, especially from the second half of 2022. Due to the currently prevailing framework conditions, a decline in real estate sales can also be expected in 2023, says Bernhard Reikersdorfer, Managing Director of Remax Austria.
For its survey, Remax records all purchase contracts in the publicly accessible official land register and supplements these with historically recorded utility value reports, zoning and building information from the property register and data from real estate advertisements. In 2022, sales fell across the board and affected apartments, land, buildings and car parking spaces as well as single-family houses, attic apartments and house parts. There was also a minus in all federal states, the least in Salzburg (minus four percent), the most in Vorarlberg (minus 14 percent). In terms of value, Carinthia was the most dynamic with an increase of eight percent (Tyrol minus seven percent).
