Vienna’s has weakest housing market in 2023 among all major European cities

According to news from Bloomberg a few days ago, Vienna, Austria has Europe’s weakest housing market in 2023 compared to every other major European city.

With the last data out, Vienna is the only major European city to post a double-digit decline in prices compared to this time last year.

That drop was 12.2 percent, with the next worst hit European city on the list being Stockholm, Sweden, which has seen a much lower 6.4 percent fall in house prices.

With new and much stricter mortgage rules now in effect in Vienna, rules that say anyone being given a mortgage must have at least 20 percent of the price of the property as a downpayment, the decline in Vienna’s housing market is expected to only worsen.

The price in euros per square meter in Vienna is now at an average of 7,084 euros, a slight increase of 0.3 percent in the last month, but still down 12.2 percent from last year.

The five worse hit European cities are:

  1. Vienna — 12.2 percent
  2. Stockholm — 6.4 percent
  3. Dublin — 2.4 percent
  4. Paris — 2.3 percent
  5. Berlin — 1.0 percent

Even though Vienna’s housing market has fallen by 12.2 percent, however, analysts still estimate the fundamental value of house prices in the Austrian capital city is still a whopping 40 percent above what it probably should be.

With the Austrian inflation rate still one of the highest in Europe, and people noticing their disposable income is less than it used to be before the Austrian government ran the country’s economy into the ground over a virus with a 99.8 percent survival rate for most, Vienna’s housing market is likely to slump even more.

In other words, if you want to buy a house or apartment in Vienna, it may behove you to wait a while, as the Vienna housing market is expected to continue to cool in 2023 with prices being affected accordingly

About Michelle Topham

I'm a journalist, and the founder of Oh My Vienna. I have been living in Vienna since 2016 as an immigrant, because 'expat' is just a fancy word that means exactly that.