Prices in Vienna

Two kinds of numbers circulate, and they differ by hundreds of euros per square metre. Advertised (asking) prices are what portals and broker reports publish; recorded transaction prices, drawn from the public land register, are what buyers actually paid. In 2025 the recorded Vienna average was about EUR 5,500 per m² for apartments — some way below the asking averages the portals showed at the time, because sellers still anchor high and negotiation is normal. Every figure on this page is indicative and dated; none replaces a valuation of the specific property.

The market has just been through a full cycle. A long boom ended in 2022 when interest rates and stricter mortgage rules bit; prices then fell through 2023 and 2024, in Vienna by a low double-digit percentage from the peak in some segments. Since 2025 the direction is modestly upward again: the Oesterreichische Nationalbank's residential property price index shows Vienna up about 2.9% in 2025 against about 1.6% in the rest of Austria, in both cases below inflation — so in real terms Vienna is cheaper than it was at the peak. Forecasts for 2026 point to moderate nominal growth, strongest in central locations.

Remember that the price is not the cost. Real estate transfer tax, the land-register fee, advisers and, usually, a broker add roughly 9–11% on top, itemised on the page about the purchase process and transaction costs. Non-EU nationals should also read the rules for foreign buyers of Austrian property before falling in love with a listing, and the Austrian property hub frames the buy-versus-rent question for a newly arrived family.

International families cluster in a handful of districts, and schools explain much of it. Döbling and Währing combine villas, gardens and short runs to the American school in the 19th district; the 22nd district's waterside new-builds sit close to the Vienna International School; the Lycée pulls French-speaking families towards the 9th. The pattern and the fee levels are set out with the international schools in Vienna.

Inside the Gürtel, the draw is the classic Viennese apartment: 3.5-metre ceilings, double doors, parquet — the Gründerzeit stock of the 1st, 4th, 8th and 9th districts. These apartments hold value stubbornly and rarely reach the open market in prime streets. Hietzing offers the villa alternative in the west, with Schönbrunn as a garden. Buyers optimising for space and newness rather than patina look east of the Danube, where the 22nd delivers new-build family apartments at half the inner-city rate.

Whether to own at all is a fair question in a city this kind to tenants — the yield a landlord earns is a rent a tenant does not pay, and the taxation of letting cuts both ways. The trade-offs sit on the pages about renting and Austrian tenancy law and about ownership structures and rental income.

The comparison that matters to most relocating families is not Favoriten against Döbling but Vienna against the cities they are leaving. On that comparison Vienna is conspicuously good value for what it offers: a capital at the very top of the global liveability rankings — second only to Copenhagen in the Economist Intelligence Unit's 2026 index — while its housing trades far below peer cities. The figures below mix sources and definitions — citywide averages against prime pockets, asking against transaction — so read them as orders of magnitude, all indicative.

Zurich costs roughly three times Vienna on a citywide view; Munich and London sit around half again to two thirds above it, with their prime segments pulling much further ahead. Put differently: the budget that buys a good apartment in Munich buys a great one in Vienna, and the London prime budget buys a palais floor. Since running costs and services follow the same pattern, the gap compounds — the arithmetic continues on the page about the cost of living in Austria, and the wider case on why families choose Austria.