Predicting the future has always been a source of fascination and great interest, but while in ancient times the oracle interpreted the future with a bird's eye view and oracle bones, today collected data from recent years provides the basis for assessing developments, including in the real estate sector.

A look into the future therefore first requires a review of the last few years, where the figures evaluated by Matthias Grosse and Alexander Bosak since 2022 show that there has been a steady decline in the number of completed residential units, taking into account both the entire Austrian state area, and the result broken down by type of housing (owner-occupied, rental, etc.).

This result may come as little surprise in view of the coronavirus crisis, rising construction costs and general inflation, as well as the effects of the KIM regulation, but it has now also been objectified and quantified using Exploreal's data. Although the outlook for the current year and the year 2026 formally continues the downward trend in completions, this is flattening out and the last two quarters have already shown that the number of projects started and reported as “in the pipeline” has increased significantly. This leads us to expect a higher number of completions in all residential categories in the future. A corresponding increase in the number of new apartments will also be necessary, as a comparison of data comparing the quantity of people moving to Austria, and Vienna in particular, with the amount of new housing created shows an ever-widening negative gap. 

On the price side, there are now also increases in the owner-occupied segment again, at least in the city of Vienna; the average price per square meter for the federal capital was recently (Q4 2024) around €7,100, while the increase on the rental market is currently not quite as high as it was recently.

Overall, the future is always uncertain, especially in our highly complex and volatile world, but the increased number of new projects means that positive conclusions can once again be drawn from the data, even though times remain challenging for the real estate sector.