Vienna Real Estate

The Viennese residential market has seen a significant increase in rental prices since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. A major policy actor in Austria has tasked DWG Berlin with analysing this rental price increase using data science. 

Scraping information from a local real estate website for the period of 2018 to 2021 shows that rental prices in Vienna have increased by 12 percent over this 3-year period. In order to get a better overview of the change in rental prices, DWG Berlin carefully collected detailed data for all 23 districts of Vienna and aggregated those in three groups. These are, central Vienna which traditionally has been the most expensive district, the inner districts which mostly consist of well-connected historic apartment buildings and the outer districts where most new developments are located. The districts that discovered the strongest increase in prices are the outer districts of Vienna, which even slightly overtook the inner districts. 

Using data scraping, DWG Berlin was able to find what amenities of the apartments were most strongly advertised by real estate agents. Comparing data from 2018 to 2021, shows that amenities such as outdoor space, public transport connections, car parking spaces and cycle storage were advertised far more often in 2021 than in 2018. 

Furthermore, as can be assumed by construction, amenities such as outdoor space or car parking spaces occur far less frequently in inner and central Vienna than in the outer districts, with central Vienna showing by far the lowest number of listings with outdoor space or car parking spaces. Moreover, amenities such as floor heating or teleheating usually more frequent in newly builds as they are easier to include in new buildings than by complex renovation of existing building stock, are far more frequently occurring in the outer districts than in central of inner Vienna. More traditional and easier to install heating systems such as self-contained central heating are far more common in central and inner Vienna which consists mostly of old building stock.

Comparing asked rental prices with amenities gives an even more interesting picture. Amenities such as outdoor space, underfloor heating or car parking achieve a significantly higher premium in the inner districts and central Vienna where these amenities are far less common than in the outer districts. Generally, different amenities in the outer districts achieve a far lower and more consistent premium than in the central and inner Vienna where the aforementioned amenities give a very significant premium.

Analysing what key factors contribute the most to asked real estate prices, the old real estate proverb of “Location, location, location” is still true with central Vienna achieving a significant premium while the apartments in the outer districts have a considerable discount. Other sizeable premia are attached to more sophisticated heating systems while traditional heating systems reflect a discount. Outdoor space amenities also show an interesting pattern with roof terraces achieving a premium while gardens achieve a very small premium close to zero. This may be due to penthouses which are usually viewed as more prestigious and luxurious having a roof terrace while ground floor flats which may be less desirable often offer a garden.