Is buying a Vienna apartment for Airbnb now too risky?

See what went wrong for property buyers in Vienna

Did Vienna actually make Airbnb investing much harder?

Yes. Buying a normal Vienna apartment specifically to run as a full-time Airbnb is much harder today than it was a few years ago.

The big change came from Vienna’s Building Code. Since July 2024, apartments outside the city’s Wohnzonen also need a specific exemption if they are offered for short-term rental for more than 90 days per calendar year. Before that change, investors could often focus heavily on whether a property sat inside or outside a protected residential zone. That shortcut has largely disappeared.

The exemption can run for a maximum of five years, and approval is far from automatic. When Vienna’s housing councillor disclosed the first figures to the city council, 709 applications had been submitted by the end of 2024 and 244 had been approved by the end of that year. Some applications were still pending, so that is not a final rejection rate, but one thing is obvious: applying is more than paperwork.

For an Airbnb buyer, the question has therefore moved down to the individual apartment and building. The district can look perfect, tourism can be booming and identical-looking apartments can sit next door to each other, yet one may have a workable legal route to short-term letting while the other does not.

Vienna Airbnb rule	What applies now	What it means for a buyer	Risk
More than 90 days of short-term letting	Usually requires an exemption	Full-time Airbnb use cannot simply be assumed	High
Exemption duration	Maximum five years	Long-term Airbnb income has renewal risk	High
Apartments outside Wohnzonen	Also covered by the newer rules	Buying outside a residential zone is no longer enough	High
Building consent	Can be required for the concrete project	Building documents need real legal review	High
Enforcement	Dedicated city controls now exist	Informal operation is much easier to detect	High

Can an investor just use Vienna’s 90-day Airbnb rule?

Usually no. Vienna’s 90-day short-term-rental allowance is aimed at people temporarily renting their own home, rather than investors keeping a separate apartment for tourists.

The City of Vienna describes the exception quite specifically. Short-term renting for up to 90 days per calendar year can remain permissible when the owner does not permanently give up the residence. Vienna even uses the example of students renting their homes while they are away during holidays.

That is quite different from buying a second apartment, furnishing it for guests and switching the Airbnb calendar on for the 90 most profitable nights of the year.

The distinction becomes even clearer for companies. Vienna says legal entities cannot rely on this home-sharing exception because a company cannot have the required residence in the apartment.

So we wouldn’t value a dedicated Airbnb investment on the assumption that the first 90 days are automatically available. A genuine owner-occupier has a useful home-sharing route. A dedicated investor needs a much stronger legal basis.

Does buying outside a Vienna Wohnzone still make Airbnb easier?

Somewhat, but buying outside a Vienna Wohnzone no longer solves the Airbnb problem by itself.

For short-term letting beyond the home-sharing limit, an ordinary apartment outside a Wohnzone generally needs an exemption under §129 of Vienna’s Building Code. Several building-level tests then come into play. The property cannot fall foul of the relevant housing-subsidy restrictions, most of the building must continue to be residential, and no more than half of its units can be commercially used for short-term accommodation under this route.

Vienna also requires evidence concerning the consent of the co-owners. That can become one of the hardest parts of the application.

Wohnzonen remain tougher because Vienna specifically protects residential use there, so investors should still care about the zoning map. But these days the useful distinction is between an apartment with a clear legal route to tourist use and one without it. “Outside the Wohnzone” is only one part of that check.

Apartment situation	Airbnb position today	Main problem	How we would treat it
Normal apartment inside a Wohnzone	Difficult	Stronger residential-use protection	Very cautious
Normal apartment outside a Wohnzone	Potentially possible	§129 exemption and building conditions	Case by case
Genuine main residence rented occasionally	Up to 90 days may qualify	Must remain genuine home sharing	Much simpler
Property already approved for accommodation use	Potentially much stronger	Exact approval still needs verification	Most interesting category

Can the other apartment owners stop your Vienna Airbnb?

Yes. Other owners in a Vienna apartment building can become a deal-breaker for an Airbnb investment, even when the flat itself looks suitable.

Austrian condominium law has long made tourist letting sensitive when the permitted use of a unit is residential. Short stays can amount to a change of use requiring the consent of other owners or court approval.

Recent litigation has made the issue even more important for Vienna investors. In a 2025 ruling, Austria’s Administrative Court held that a general clause in a condominium agreement allowing short-term rental was not enough to replace the consent required for a specific §129 application. A Vienna administrative-court case reached a similar conclusion where the agreement broadly allowed Airbnb-style letting but did not identify which apartments would actually use the right.

Then, in a 2026 Supreme Court case, the dispute involved a building where the condominium agreement had expressly allowed every owner to operate serviced apartments or holiday apartments. One owner was still seeking signed declarations from the other owners for a concrete Vienna exemption application.

That recent case law makes casual due diligence dangerous. A seller telling us “Airbnb is permitted in the Wohnungseigentumsvertrag” does not settle the issue anymore.

We’d want the exact clause, the specific owner consents needed for the proposed use, the municipal approval and any relevant court decisions concerning that building before paying an Airbnb premium.

Does an existing Vienna Airbnb listing prove the apartment is legal?

No. Seeing a Vienna apartment already operating on Airbnb tells us very little about whether a buyer could legally continue the business.

An active listing might belong to a genuine home sharer, a properly permitted apartment, licensed accommodation premises or an operator whose legal position has never been tested. Airbnb and Booking.com do not function as Vienna building-law approval databases.

The same caution applies when somebody sells an apartment as an “existing Airbnb business.” Reviews, occupancy history and revenue statements prove that guests stayed there. They do not prove that the buyer inherits every right needed to keep taking those bookings.

The city now has a dedicated short-term-rental enforcement unit, and Vienna’s Building Code gives authorities access to accommodation-tax information for enforcement purposes. The legislation explicitly allows the authority to use data such as addresses, host details and declared rental periods when checking compliance.

Building-law offences can carry fines of up to €50,000. “Everyone in this building does Airbnb” is a pretty weak argument to build a purchase around.

Before buying an operating Vienna Airbnb, we would verify the approved use of the unit, the condominium documents, the specific co-owner consent, the municipal exemption and its remaining duration. Booking history would come after those checks, not before them.

Has Vienna’s Airbnb crackdown actually reduced short-term-rental supply?

Yes, tracked Vienna short-term-rental supply has fallen very sharply lately, although we should not pretend regulation explains every disappearing listing.

AirDNA’s latest Vienna dataset tracks about 10,310 active short-term rentals. That is 52.6% fewer than a year earlier. At the same time, the platform reports average occupancy around 66%, up 16.5% year on year, while the average daily rate has risen 11.4% to about $140. RevPAR is up roughly 24%.

Those figures fit what we would expect after a big regulatory restriction: fewer active listings, with the surviving stock filling more nights and charging more.

The 52.6% figure should still be handled carefully. AirDNA combines Airbnb, Vrbo and Booking.com data, its definition of active supply can change with listing behaviour, and we cannot attribute every removal to Vienna’s Building Code.

Even with that caveat, the scale is hard to dismiss. A small regulatory effect would not normally sit alongside a tracked supply contraction of more than half.

For buyers, this creates an interesting split. Entering the market has become much harder, while operators who really can stay in the market are facing less visible competition.

AirDNA Vienna metric	Latest reading	Year-on-year change	What we take from it
Active listings	10,310	-52.6%	Tracked supply has collapsed
Occupancy	66%	+16.5%	Remaining listings are filling more nights
Average daily rate	$140	+11.4%	Hosts are also charging more
RevPAR	$91	+24.2%	Revenue performance per available night is stronger

Is Vienna tourism strong enough to support Airbnbs today?

Definitely. Vienna currently has plenty of tourist demand, so weak visitor numbers are a poor reason to avoid the market.

Vienna recorded 20.065 million visitor overnight stays in 2025, according to the Vienna Tourist Board. That was 6% above the previous year and the best tourism result the city had ever recorded. The prior year had already set a record.

The quality of that demand is also useful for short-term accommodation. Vienna attracts leisure visitors, business travellers, major conferences and events across much of the year. In 2024 alone, the city hosted more than 6,600 meetings and congresses, and Vienna topped the ICCA ranking for international congress destinations.

Austria itself also recorded another record tourism year in 2025, with roughly 157 million overnight stays according to Statistics Austria.

So there is little evidence that a Vienna Airbnb buyer today needs to bet on a tourism recovery. The tourists are already there.

The harder question is whether the apartment we buy is allowed to serve them.

Are legal Vienna Airbnbs becoming more valuable now?

Probably, especially where the right to host tourists is unusually secure.

Vienna now combines record tourism with much tighter limits on short-term-rental supply. AirDNA’s data suggests the number of active listings has dropped dramatically, while occupancy, nightly rates and RevPAR have gone the other way.

Scarcity can therefore work in favour of the apartments that survive the legal filter.

But we would be careful about calling every §129-approved apartment a scarce permanent asset. The standard exemption has an expiry date. Other building-law, condominium-law and commercial requirements still sit around it. A future purchaser will also ask how long the permission has left.

The stronger opportunity is a property where tourist accommodation is deeply supported by the building’s legal setup: clear approved use, concrete owner consent, no obvious conflict with the building thresholds and a municipal route that has already been properly tested.

That type of apartment can deserve a premium today. An ordinary residential flat with two years left on an exception probably deserves much less.

Is a five-year Vienna Airbnb permit long enough to justify paying more?

Usually not by much. A five-year Vienna short-term-rental exemption is valuable, but we would not pay for its Airbnb income as though that income were permanent.

Vienna caps the standard §129 exemption at five years. Renewal can be sought, but the apartment has to meet the requirements again when the next application is made.

Property investors normally buy an asset expected to last for decades. Five years is short in that context.

Suppose an apartment produces €10,000 more net income each year as an Airbnb than it could as a normal rental. Paying €50,000 extra for that capability may look mathematically reasonable. Yet almost the entire premium depends on recovering five perfect years of extra earnings before considering financing, tax, furnishing, downtime, unexpected costs or the risk that the permission is not renewed.

A much safer purchase is one where the normal residential value already supports most of the price. The Airbnb permit then adds several years of extra income instead of carrying the whole valuation.

That is how we would price a time-limited permission today.

Can a Vienna Airbnb still earn much more than a normal rental?

Yes. A good legal Vienna Airbnb can still generate much more gross revenue than a normal residential tenancy.

AirDNA’s latest dataset puts average annual revenue for an active Vienna short-term rental at about $30,500, with an average nightly rate of roughly $140 and occupancy around 66%. At current exchange rates, $30,500 is roughly €26,000.

For illustration, €26,000 of annual accommodation revenue from a 50-square-metre apartment works out at more than €43 per square metre per month before expenses. Normal residential rent would usually sit far below that gross figure.

But Airbnb revenue is much further from owner profit. The host pays for utilities, internet, furnishing, cleaning logistics, linen, guest communication, platform costs, repairs and higher wear. Professional management takes another bite if the owner does not want a second job.

There is also a comparison problem. AirDNA’s Vienna average mixes units of different sizes, locations and operating models. We cannot take its €26,000-equivalent citywide revenue figure and drop it into the spreadsheet for whichever 50-square-metre flat happens to be for sale.

The revenue gap is real. The profit gap can still be attractive, but it needs to be measured apartment by apartment.

Are Vienna’s higher tourist taxes starting to hurt Airbnb returns?

Yes, although the higher Vienna accommodation tax is a cost increase rather than a reason to abandon a genuinely good Airbnb.

Vienna’s Ortstaxe is currently 5% of the relevant accommodation charge, excluding VAT and breakfast. It is already scheduled to rise to 8% from July 2027.

For hosts who are not liable for VAT, Vienna’s own calculation translates the current tax into an effective 4.7619% of the relevant guest payment. Under the scheduled 8% rate, the corresponding factor becomes 7.4074%.

That is a meaningful move. On €30,000 of qualifying accommodation revenue, the difference between those two effective rates is roughly €794 a year before considering how much can be passed through to guests.

The tax also fits the wider direction of travel in Vienna. Hosting tourists is becoming more regulated and somewhat more expensive at the same time.

We would therefore build future Airbnb cash flows with the already-announced higher tax rather than use the current rate forever.

Vienna accommodation tax	Effective factor for a non-VAT host	Tax on €30,000 of relevant revenue	Difference
Current 5% headline rate	4.7619%	~€1,429	—
Scheduled 8% headline rate	7.4074%	~€2,222	~€794 more

Does a Vienna Airbnb need more than the city’s short-term-rental permit?

Potentially yes. A Vienna Airbnb investor has to think about commercial law as well as the municipal short-term-rental permission.

Austrian law distinguishes straightforward letting from accommodation activity that starts to resemble a hospitality business. The Austrian Chamber of Commerce looks at factors such as the length of stays, services supplied to guests, cleaning, linen and the overall way the accommodation is marketed and operated.

There are simplified routes for small accommodation businesses, including certain operations with no more than ten guest beds, but “small” does not mean regulation-free.

Private-room letting also has its own narrower treatment. That generally concerns accommodation connected to the host’s own household and carried on as a secondary domestic activity. A separately purchased investment apartment does not become private home sharing simply because it only has four beds.

So before buying, we would determine what the operator is actually doing rather than stop once the §129 paperwork looks good.

That is another reason a property sold as “Airbnb ready” deserves more scrutiny than the label suggests.

What happens if your Vienna Airbnb permission disappears?

A good Vienna Airbnb apartment should still work as an ordinary home if tourist letting stops.

That fallback matters more now because Vienna’s permits can expire and the city has made residential use a clear policy priority.

Fortunately, Vienna still has a deep owner-occupier and long-term rental market. OTTO Immobilien’s latest residential-market work shows the purchase market recovering: in the first quarter of 2026, apartment transaction volume reached about €450 million, up 20% year on year, while the number of transactions rose 25% to 1,254. Existing apartments averaged around €4,536 per square metre in that quarter.

But fallback income varies enormously between buildings. Austria’s Mietrechtsgesetz can restrict rents in older housing, including many classic Vienna Altbau apartments. The city’s Richtwert rules matter particularly for investors buying attractive old apartments and assuming they can simply switch to a high market rent if Airbnb stops working.

That creates a trap. The apartment that photographs beautifully for tourists may have weaker normal-rental economics than a less romantic newer unit.

We would therefore check the long-term tenancy regime before doing any Airbnb modelling. The fallback rent should be a real legal rent, rather than whatever asking price appears on an online portal.

Fallback feature	Safer Vienna Airbnb purchase	Riskier purchase
Local residential demand	Strong	Mainly tourist-driven
Long-term rent regime	Clear and economically workable	Heavy restrictions ignored in underwriting
Layout	Useful to locals and tourists	Designed almost entirely around short stays
Transport	Good everyday connections	Attractive mainly for sightseeing
Purchase valuation	Supported by residential comparables	Only works with Airbnb income

Are Vienna apartment prices cheap enough to absorb the Airbnb risk?

No. Vienna apartments have become active enough again that buyers cannot rely on a distressed purchase price to compensate for weak Airbnb rights.

OTTO Immobilien reported an average existing-apartment price of about €4,536 per square metre in the first quarter of 2026, while developer and first-occupancy apartments averaged approximately €7,291 per square metre. Transactions were also up sharply from a year earlier.

At those averages, a 50-square-metre existing apartment comes to roughly €227,000 before acquisition costs. A similarly sized new apartment comes to about €365,000.

Austria then adds a 3.5% real-estate transfer tax and, in the normal investment case, a 1.1% land-register registration charge, before legal, notarial and any brokerage costs. Financing can add further expenses.

This makes a big difference when somebody advertises an Airbnb yield using the property’s sticker price alone.

A €250,000 apartment does not represent €250,000 of invested capital, and paying another €30,000 or €50,000 because the seller presents it as an Airbnb can quickly erase the apparent upside.

We would pay a meaningful tourist-use premium only when the legal position deserves one.

What does a Vienna Airbnb investment actually look like after the numbers?

The numbers can still work today, but a citywide Airbnb revenue figure makes the investment look easier than it really is.

Take a simple illustration using OTTO’s first-quarter average of €4,536 per square metre for an existing apartment. A 50-square-metre flat would cost about €226,800 before buying costs.

Now compare that with AirDNA’s roughly $30,500, or around €26,000, of average annual revenue for an active Vienna short-term rental. Gross accommodation revenue would equal roughly 11.5% of our illustrative purchase price.

That sounds excellent at first.

Yet we still have to add acquisition costs to the capital invested and subtract platform costs, local tax, utilities, furniture, cleaning, linen, repairs, guest management and vacancy from the revenue. Financing and income tax depend on the buyer.

More importantly, the two averages do not describe the same apartment. OTTO’s number covers Vienna resale transactions, while AirDNA’s figure covers active short-term rentals across different sizes and neighbourhoods. Combining them is useful as a stress test rather than as a promised yield.

Once we model a realistic gross-to-net conversion, the return starts looking much more like a property investment and much less like an easy double-digit yield.

Illustrative 50 m² Vienna resale	Approximate figure	What it tells us	What it does not tell us
Price at €4,536/m²	€226,800	Rough residential purchase benchmark	Exact value of a specific apartment
AirDNA average annual revenue	~€26,000	Short-term rental revenue can be substantial	Revenue this apartment will achieve
Gross revenue / headline price	~11.5%	Airbnb has strong top-line potential	Net investment yield
Transfer tax	3.5%	Acquisition capital rises immediately	Total buying costs
Land-register charge	1.1% in normal investment case	Adds further friction	Legal, broker or financing expenses

Which Vienna apartments are actually worth considering for Airbnb now?

The best Vienna Airbnb buys today are properties with unusually clean tourist-use rights and an ordinary residential value that still makes sense.

We would start with the legal file before looking at projected occupancy. The useful properties are the ones where the approved use is clear, the co-owner consent works for the concrete project, the building remains within the applicable short-term-rental limits, there is no problematic subsidy history, and the municipal permission can be documented.

Then we would look at the apartment as though Airbnb disappeared. Good transport, a practical layout, normal residential demand and a sensible long-term rental position give the buyer somewhere to land if the rules change or a permit is not renewed.

An apartment that only works because tourists will supposedly pay €180 a night forever is much harder to justify.

Location still matters, of course, but we would rather own a legally robust apartment ten minutes farther from the historic centre than a perfect tourist flat whose Airbnb rights depend on optimistic interpretations of the rules.

Today the scarce commodity in Vienna is legal certainty around the use, not another nicely renovated one-bedroom near the Ring.

So, is buying a Vienna apartment for Airbnb now too risky?

Yes for the standard strategy. Buying an ordinary Vienna apartment today with the plan to “turn it into an Airbnb” afterward carries too much regulatory risk for us to recommend it.

Vienna tourism itself looks excellent. The city has just recorded more than 20 million annual visitor nights, and the latest short-term-rental data shows high occupancy and stronger nightly rates. There is clearly money to be made serving tourists.

Access to that money has become much harder.

A dedicated investment apartment generally needs a proper legal route beyond the narrow home-sharing exception. Co-owner consent can become a serious hurdle, and recent Austrian court decisions show that even a broadly Airbnb-friendly condominium agreement may fail to provide the specific consent Vienna requires. As seen above, the standard municipal exemption also comes with a maximum five-year horizon. Enforcement has become more organised, while the accommodation tax is already higher than it used to be and another increase is scheduled.

We would therefore reject the old strategy of finding a central apartment, estimating Airbnb revenue and sorting out the permissions after signing.

The better strategy these days is almost the reverse. Find the rare properties where tourist use is already genuinely defensible, verify every part of that legal position before committing, and pay a premium only when the underlying apartment would still be a respectable residential investment without Airbnb.

That leaves a much smaller investable universe, but potentially a better one. Vienna’s tighter rules are removing casual operators while tourism remains very strong, so properly legal short-term accommodation may become more valuable precisely because it is harder to create.

For a casual buyer, Vienna Airbnb has become too risky. For a specialist who can identify durable legal rights without overpaying for them, there are still deals worth doing.

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A team researching how property purchases actually go wrong across Europe

We are a team of real estate researchers and local specialists focused on helping people avoid expensive mistakes when buying property abroad, particularly in Vienna. If you’d like to learn more about us, you can check our presentation page.