
Get all the data you need about the real estate market in Vienna
SUMMARY
Vienna apartments are expensive right now, but there is no useful single citywide price: ordinary resale stock in cheaper districts can still sit around €4,000/m², while many premium new builds cost €8,000–€9,000/m² and prime central apartments go much higher.
The cleanest completed-sale benchmarks are roughly €4,645/m² for existing apartments and €7,395/m² for new ones. That is a new-build premium of about 59%, or close to €193,000 on a 70 m² apartment.
The roughly €6,700/m² prices buyers see on Vienna property websites describe a different slice of the market. They are asking prices and include more new, renovated, premium and unsold stock, so the gap with resale transaction data should not be mistaken for a giant normal negotiating discount.
Location changes the budget more than the city average suggests. Existing apartments are around €3,750–€4,050/m² in Donaustadt, Floridsdorf, Simmering, Brigittenau and Favoriten, compared with roughly €5,800–€6,100/m² in Neubau, Hietzing, Josefstadt and Döbling.
A €300,000 budget still gets a buyer into Vienna's normal resale market. The same money feels much tighter in new construction: at Donaustadt's current new-build benchmark it buys only about 54 m², and in Döbling roughly 34 m².
New-build prices have proved unusually sticky. Construction remains expensive, developers are completing fewer homes and the available development pipeline is thin enough that buyers waiting for broad developer price cuts may be waiting for the wrong thing.
The recovery is stronger in activity than in prices. Vienna condominium sales rose 18% year over year in the first half of 2026 and transaction value rose 21%, while resale prices increased at a much more moderate pace.
Financing is still far more expensive than during the zero-rate years, but it has stopped deteriorating sharply. Housing-loan demand has been rising again, which suggests buyers have adjusted through smaller budgets, more equity or different locations rather than simply leaving the market.
Supply is now one of the clearest supports under Vienna housing. Completions fell below 10,000 units in 2025, the 2026 pipeline is expected to be weaker again, and the shortage is especially visible in rental and new owner-occupied stock.
For value-focused buyers, the biggest opportunity is often geographic rather than cyclical. At current district benchmarks, €400,000 corresponds to roughly 107 m² in Donaustadt but only around 66 m² in Döbling, a difference of about 41 m² before acquisition costs.
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How expensive are apartments in Vienna right now?
How much does a typical apartment in Vienna cost right now?
A typical Vienna resale apartment currently changes hands for roughly €4,600 per square metre, while buyers of newly built apartments are paying closer to €7,400 per square metre.
Those are the latest completed-sale averages reported by OTTO Immobilien for the first half of 2026: €4,645/m² for existing apartments and €7,395/m² for first-occupancy developer units. For a 70 m² apartment, that works out at about €325,000 for resale and €518,000 for new construction, before taxes and other purchase costs.
That is why a single “Vienna apartment price” is misleading. A buyer looking through 1960s or Gründerzeit resale stock is operating in a completely different price bracket from someone browsing newly completed projects.
The spread gets much wider once location enters the picture. EHL's latest district-level residential report puts ordinary existing apartments below €4,000/m² in parts of outer Vienna, while good established districts are around €6,000/m² and prime central properties can go far higher.
| Vienna apartment segment | Typical price per m² | 50 m² | 70 m² | 100 m² |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Existing apartment, completed sale | €4,645 | €232,250 | €325,150 | €464,500 |
| New apartment, completed sale | €7,395 | €369,750 | €517,650 | €739,500 |
| New-build premium | 59% | €137,500 | €192,500 | €275,000 |
Why do Vienna apartments look much more expensive on property websites?
Vienna asking prices are currently around €6,700/m², far above the average price actually paid for an ordinary resale apartment.
ImmoScout24's latest large analysis puts Vienna apartment asking prices at €6,729/m² in the first half of 2026, up 2% from a year earlier. That would make a 70 m² apartment look like a €471,000 purchase.
A second, much smaller current dataset points to almost exactly the same level. Fylpi's latest monthly index, based on 119 active Vienna apartment listings, shows a median asking price of €6,682/m².
Yet OTTO's completed transactions for existing apartments average €4,645/m². The roughly €2,000/m² difference is not a normal negotiating discount: the datasets contain different properties. Listing portals tend to carry more new, renovated, premium and unsold stock, while transaction data tells us what actually reached the land register.
For someone searching today, both figures are useful. Around €6,700/m² describes the prices people often see on screen. Around €4,600/m² is the better benchmark for the broader resale market that actually closes.
| Price measure | Current level | 70 m² equivalent | What it tells us |
|---|---|---|---|
| ImmoScout24 Vienna asking price | €6,729/m² | €471,030 | Large listing-market benchmark |
| Fylpi current asking-price median | €6,682/m² | €467,740 | Very recent, smaller listing sample |
| OTTO existing-home transaction average | €4,645/m² | €325,150 | Completed resale purchases |
| OTTO new-build transaction average | €7,395/m² | €517,650 | Completed first-occupancy purchases |
Get fresh and reliable data on the Vienna property market
Investor flats on the edge of the city are priced on a brochure yield the rent has never reached. Where asking prices sit furthest from what places actually earn and resell for.
Are Vienna apartment prices rising again now?
Yes. Vienna apartment prices are rising again, although the increase is still fairly modest compared with the old boom.
OTTO recorded existing-apartment prices moving from €4,519/m² in the second half of 2025 to €4,645/m² in the first half of 2026. That is a 2.8% increase in six months. New-build prices barely changed, moving from €7,376 to €7,395/m².
Advertised prices are moving in the same direction. ImmoScout24 found that Vienna apartment asking prices in the first half of 2026 were 2% higher than a year earlier. Earlier in the recovery, its 2025 data had shown only a 1% increase for Vienna.
The latest official national data also points upward. Statistics Austria's first-quarter 2026 House Price Index was 3.5% above the previous year for existing homes and 3.2% higher for new homes. The second-quarter official index has not yet been released, so there is no clean official confirmation yet that the acceleration continued beyond that point.
The falling-price phase is over for now. Vienna has moved into a moderate upswing, with resale apartments currently showing more movement than new builds.
Which Vienna districts are actually cheap and which are expensive?
Vienna's apartment market currently stretches from roughly €3,750/m² for existing homes in Donaustadt to around €6,100/m² in Döbling, even before we enter the exceptional luxury market of the First District.
EHL and BUWOG's 2026 residential report shows a clear lower-price cluster in the outer districts. Existing apartments are around €3,750/m² in Donaustadt, €3,850 in Floridsdorf, €3,900 in Simmering, €3,950 in Brigittenau and €4,050 in Favoriten.
Move into established inner and affluent western districts and the budget jumps. Leopoldstadt is around €5,100/m², Wieden €5,650, Neubau €5,800, Hietzing €5,950, Josefstadt €6,050 and Döbling €6,100.
For a 70 m² apartment, the distance between Donaustadt and Döbling is roughly €164,500. That is a much more useful way to understand Vienna than calling the city a €5,000/m² or €7,000/m² market.
The pattern is also less tidy than “centre expensive, outskirts cheap.” Döbling and Hietzing command major premiums despite lying well outside the historic centre. Vienna prices greenery, established neighbourhoods, architecture, schools and prestige alongside commuting distance.
| District | Existing apartment €/m² | Approx. 70 m² price | Broad price position |
|---|---|---|---|
| Donaustadt | €3,750 | €262,500 | Low |
| Floridsdorf | €3,850 | €269,500 | Low |
| Simmering | €3,900 | €273,000 | Low |
| Brigittenau | €3,950 | €276,500 | Low |
| Favoriten | €4,050 | €283,500 | Below average |
| Leopoldstadt | €5,100 | €357,000 | Mid-high |
| Wieden | €5,650 | €395,500 | High |
| Neubau | €5,800 | €406,000 | High |
| Hietzing | €5,950 | €416,500 | Very high |
| Josefstadt | €6,050 | €423,500 | Very high |
| Döbling | €6,100 | €427,000 | Very high |
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The pack also covers the ten percent that lands on top of the price, and whether you are allowed to buy at all.
How much extra do you pay for a new apartment in Vienna?
A new apartment in Vienna currently costs about 60% more per square metre than the average existing apartment across completed transactions.
That citywide gap is unusually large. At today's transaction levels, upgrading from the average existing apartment to an average first-occupancy unit adds roughly €193,000 to the cost of 70 m².
The district data shows that this premium survives almost everywhere. EHL puts a new apartment in Donaustadt at about €5,550/m² compared with €3,750/m² for existing stock. Favoriten is roughly €5,850 versus €4,050. Leopoldstadt is around €7,300 versus €5,100, while Döbling reaches roughly €8,700 versus €6,100.
Some of that extra money buys obvious things: modern insulation, lower expected energy consumption, lifts, balconies, newer layouts and fewer immediate renovation problems. Scarcity plays a big role too. Developers have been producing far fewer apartments since financing and construction costs jumped.
Statistics Austria's latest construction-price data helps explain why new apartments have not suddenly become cheap despite the property downturn. Austrian construction prices were still 4.9% higher year over year in the second quarter of 2026.
So buyers waiting for developers to slash new-build prices across Vienna are fighting fairly stubborn cost economics.
| District | Existing €/m² | New €/m² | Approx. premium | 70 m² new apartment |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Donaustadt | €3,750 | €5,550 | 48% | €388,500 |
| Favoriten | €4,050 | €5,850 | 44% | €409,500 |
| Leopoldstadt | €5,100 | €7,300 | 43% | €511,000 |
| Wieden | €5,650 | €7,500 | 33% | €525,000 |
| Neubau | €5,800 | €7,600 | 31% | €532,000 |
| Döbling | €6,100 | €8,700 | 43% | €609,000 |
Can you still find a new Vienna apartment below €6,000 per square metre?
Yes, new Vienna apartments below €6,000/m² still exist, but the search is now concentrated mainly in outer districts.
EHL's district benchmarks put first-occupancy apartments around €5,550/m² in Simmering and Donaustadt, €5,650 in Floridsdorf, and about €5,800 in Brigittenau and Liesing.
That still means close to €400,000 for 70 m². At €5,550/m², the calculation comes to €388,500 before purchase costs. So “below €6,000/m²” should not be confused with genuinely cheap housing.
Once buyers want a fashionable inner district or an affluent established neighbourhood, €7,000–€9,000/m² becomes much more normal for new construction. EHL places Wieden around €7,500, Neubau €7,600, Hietzing and Währing around €8,000, Josefstadt €8,100 and Döbling around €8,700.
The sub-€6,000 new-build market is still there, but geography decides whether buyers can access it.
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Investor flats on the edge of the city are priced on a brochure yield the rent has never reached. Where asking prices sit furthest from what places actually earn and resell for.
How expensive is Vienna's Innere Stadt compared with the rest of the city?
Vienna's Innere Stadt sits in a different price universe, with prime advertised apartments capable of costing two to four times as much per square metre as ordinary homes elsewhere in the city.
The First District is difficult to reduce to a clean transaction average because very few comparable apartments trade there. EHL's residential report avoids presenting a standard owner-occupied figure for the district when the underlying sample is too thin.
Listing data gives a better sense of the ceiling. ImmoScout24's previous detailed district study put the First District median asking price above €16,000/m². At that level, 70 m² comes to roughly €1.15 million.
Compare that with about €263,000 for 70 m² at Donaustadt's current existing-home benchmark, around €357,000 in Leopoldstadt or €427,000 in Döbling.
Those are huge gaps inside one city. Whenever someone describes Vienna apartments as costing €10,000 or €15,000 per square metre, check whether the discussion has quietly drifted from Vienna as a whole into prime central Vienna.
What can €300,000, €400,000 or €500,000 buy in Vienna now?
A €300,000 budget can still buy a normal existing apartment in Vienna, while €500,000 gives buyers serious choice across much of the resale market.
Using current EHL district transaction levels, €300,000 corresponds to around 80 m² in Donaustadt, 77 m² in Simmering, 74 m² in Favoriten, 59 m² in Leopoldstadt and 49 m² in Döbling. These are rough budget equivalents before acquisition costs, not promises about individual listings.
At €400,000, the same calculation gives roughly 107 m² in Donaustadt, 99 m² in Favoriten, 78 m² in Leopoldstadt and 66 m² in Döbling.
A €500,000 buyer can theoretically reach 123–133 m² of typical existing stock across several cheaper outer districts, around 98 m² at Leopoldstadt's price level and 82 m² in Döbling.
New construction changes the picture fast. €300,000 buys only around 54 m² at Donaustadt's €5,550/m² new-build level, while €500,000 gives roughly 57 m² in a district such as Döbling at €8,700/m².
Small apartments can also be surprisingly expensive for the same reason. Forty square metres costs around €222,000 at Donaustadt's new-build benchmark and about €348,000 at Döbling's. Prime central stock can push a small apartment far beyond those figures.
| Budget | Existing Donaustadt | Existing Favoriten | Existing Leopoldstadt | Existing Döbling | New Donaustadt | New Döbling |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| €300,000 | 80 m² | 74 m² | 59 m² | 49 m² | 54 m² | 34 m² |
| €400,000 | 107 m² | 99 m² | 78 m² | 66 m² | 72 m² | 46 m² |
| €500,000 | 133 m² | 123 m² | 98 m² | 82 m² | 90 m² | 57 m² |
| €600,000 | 160 m² | 148 m² | 118 m² | 98 m² | 108 m² | 69 m² |
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Has Vienna's apartment market recovered from the downturn?
Vienna's apartment market has clearly recovered in activity, while prices are only partway through their comeback.
The downturn followed an extraordinary boom. Statistics Austria recorded national residential price increases of 7.6% in 2020, 11.4% in 2021 and 11.6% in 2022. Prices then fell in 2023 and barely moved in 2024 before returning to growth in 2025.
Vienna went through the same basic cycle. Financing became much harder after interest rates jumped, transaction volumes collapsed, developers pulled back and prices softened. The recovery since then has been much stronger in actual buying than in price.
OTTO's latest Vienna data shows €1.62 billion of apartment transactions in the first half of 2026. That was 21% higher than a year earlier and only 8% below the equivalent record period in 2022.
Resale prices are rising again too, but by single-digit percentages rather than boom-era double digits. Vienna is no longer a distressed market, yet today's price behaviour is still much calmer than 2021–2022.
| Stage | What happened | Price direction | Buyer activity |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2020–2022 boom | Cheap credit and very strong demand | Rapid increases | Very strong |
| 2023 downturn | Rate shock hit affordability | Falling | Collapsed |
| 2024 stabilisation | Buyers adjusted to financing costs | Mostly weak/flat | Began improving |
| 2025 recovery | Demand returned | Moderate increases | Clearly stronger |
| Current Vienna market | Supply tight, buyers active again | Rising moderately | Nearer old highs |
Are buyers really coming back to Vienna apartments?
Yes, buyers have come back strongly to Vienna apartments, and the jump in transactions is much bigger than the recent rise in prices.
OTTO counted 4,290 condominium sales in the first half of 2026, up 18% from 3,644 a year earlier. The money spent rose even faster, climbing 21%.
ImmoScout24 sees the same change from the search side. Its 2025 analysis found demand for Vienna condominiums up 21% from the previous year. Austrian banks are also seeing more would-be buyers turn into borrowers: the OeNB's second-quarter 2026 Bank Lending Survey says household demand for housing loans increased again, continuing an upward trend that began in early 2024.
Those datasets cover different stages of the buying process — online searches, mortgage demand and completed purchases — and all three have moved upward. The recovery is not coming from one quirky price index.
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Why haven't mortgage rates pushed Vienna apartment prices back down?
Mortgage rates are still expensive compared with the zero-rate years, but financing has stopped getting dramatically worse and Austrian households are borrowing for housing again.
The OeNB's latest lending survey found that demand for private housing loans increased further in the second quarter of 2026. Banks attributed the rise partly to better expectations for residential property and greater optimism among households seeking finance.
Euro-area mortgage pricing also gives us the right order of magnitude. The ECB's latest monthly figures put the composite cost of new housing borrowing at 3.54%. Loans fixed for more than ten years averaged 3.36%, while five-to-ten-year fixes were around 3.73%.
Those rates still hurt affordability. A buyer financing €300,000 at roughly 3.5% pays substantially more interest than someone who borrowed near 1% several years ago.
But the market has already absorbed much of that adjustment. Buyers have had years to lower budgets, add equity, choose smaller homes or move farther out. Meanwhile, limited new construction has kept sellers from facing a flood of competing supply.
Higher mortgage rates are holding back what buyers can pay, but they are no longer producing the kind of sudden demand shock that drove the 2023 correction.
Is Vienna building enough apartments for its housing demand?
No. Vienna is currently building too little housing for the demand the city is generating, and the shortage is getting harder to ignore.
CBRE's latest Vienna Living Figures says newly completed housing increased during the second quarter of 2026 but still remained below actual demand, particularly in rental housing. Building permits are also falling while construction costs remain high.
EHL's more recent market work reaches the same broad conclusion. It says Vienna fell below 10,000 completed apartments in 2025 for the first time in almost a decade and projects only about 8,630 completions in 2026. The company says supply has fallen while housing demand has settled at a high level.
The ownership segment is tight too. EHL's first-quarter update expected around 3,738 newly completed owner-occupied units for 2026, roughly 1,000 fewer than the previous year.
This supply weakness helps explain two things happening at once: rents are climbing quickly, while resale buyers have become more active because fewer new apartments are available.
For apartment prices, that removes one of the easiest routes to another broad decline. Vienna would need either a major demand shock or a much stronger supply response to recreate the conditions for widespread price cuts.
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Are Vienna's cheaper outer districts actually better value?
For buyers who care more about space and entry price than prestige, Vienna's cheaper outer districts currently offer much better value per euro.
Donaustadt, Floridsdorf, Simmering and Favoriten sit roughly 30–40% below districts such as Neubau, Hietzing, Josefstadt and Döbling on EHL's existing-apartment benchmarks.
The discount can buy an extra room rather than a marginal saving. €400,000 corresponds to around 107 m² at Donaustadt's current level, compared with roughly 66 m² in Döbling. That is about 41 m² of additional theoretical floor area for the same money.
Outer districts also contain much of Vienna's realistic development capacity. EHL points to the 21st and 22nd districts as major centres of current new housing construction because large development areas remain available there.
There are obvious trade-offs around commute, neighbourhood character and prestige. Still, if usable housing matters more than a fashionable postcode, the outer districts give you a lot more apartment for the same budget.
Is Vienna expensive compared with the rest of Austria?
Yes, Vienna apartments are among Austria's most expensive, although the capital is currently cheaper than Tirol and Vorarlberg on advertised apartment prices.
ImmoScout24's first-half 2026 analysis puts Vienna at €6,729/m² in median asking prices. Tirol leads at €7,259/m² and Vorarlberg follows at €6,937/m². Salzburg is lower than Vienna at roughly €6,440/m².
The Austrian apartment average in the same dataset was €6,248/m², so Vienna carries a premium of roughly 8%. The difference is meaningful, although much smaller than someone might expect from comparing the capital with cheaper parts of eastern or southern Austria.
Vienna's internal spread is actually more striking than its premium over the national average. The price gap between an ordinary apartment in Donaustadt and one in Döbling, let alone prime Innere Stadt, is larger than the gap between Vienna's overall asking level and several other Austrian regions.
So the label “Vienna is expensive” is accurate, but district and apartment type tell us far more than the city average alone.
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What each district costs, what the law will actually let you charge in rent, how long a flat sits before it sells. Plus the things nobody writes down: the ten percent that lands on top of the price, and whether you are allowed to buy at all.
So, how expensive are apartments in Vienna right now?
Vienna apartments are expensive today, but the useful answer runs from roughly €4,000/m² for ordinary resale stock in cheaper districts to €8,000–€9,000/m² for many premium new builds, with prime central apartments able to go far beyond €10,000/m².
The citywide transaction benchmarks are about €4,645/m² for existing apartments and €7,395/m² for new ones. Current listing data sits around €6,700/m², which explains why buyers browsing Vienna online often come away with a much more expensive impression.
In practical terms, around €300,000 still gets a buyer into Vienna's resale market. €400,000–€500,000 opens up considerably more choice and can buy a substantial existing apartment outside the most expensive districts. The same budgets feel much tighter once the search shifts to new construction, Döbling, Josefstadt, Neubau or the central luxury market.
Vienna has also moved beyond the weakest point of its property downturn. Buyers are returning, mortgage demand has been rising since early 2024, resale prices are moving upward again and developers are producing too few homes to create much competitive pressure on prices.
Vienna is expensive but highly segmented. Someone buying a normal resale apartment in Favoriten, Simmering or Donaustadt is still operating around the €3,750–€4,050/m² range. A buyer wanting new construction in an established premium district can easily pay twice that. Prime Innere Stadt belongs in yet another category.
That range is the real answer. Any single Vienna-wide number hides too much.
OUR METHODOLOGY
This analysis tests how expensive apartments in Vienna really are today by separating the market into the dimensions that change what a buyer actually pays: asking prices versus completed transactions, existing versus newly built apartments, district-level differences, prime-market outliers, purchasing power at different budgets, recent price momentum, buyer activity, financing conditions and new housing supply.
We gave the most weight to fresh Vienna-specific evidence. Completed-sale data is used for prices actually achieved; large listing datasets show the prices buyers encounter while searching; district reports expose differences hidden by citywide averages; and official statistics, lending surveys and construction data are used to check whether the price picture fits the wider market environment.
We kept Vienna-specific evidence separate from Austria-wide indicators. National house-price, construction and financing data help describe the broader cycle, but local transaction, district and supply data carry more weight when the question is specifically about Vienna.
Where one dataset could give a partial view, we cross-checked it with evidence from another stage of the market. Search demand, mortgage demand, completed purchases, achieved prices and the construction pipeline are therefore treated as separate pieces of evidence rather than as interchangeable measures.
The budget and floor-area comparisons convert current per-square-metre benchmarks into standardized examples. They are analytical equivalents designed to make districts and apartment types comparable, not estimates of what every individual listing will sell for.
Key sources include OTTO Immobilien's Vienna residential market report for H1 2026, the EHL / BUWOG First Vienna Residential Market Report 2026, ImmoScout24's H1 2026 asking-price analysis, Fylpi's September 2026 Vienna price index, Statistics Austria's House Price Index, the OeNB's Q2 2026 Bank Lending Survey, the ECB's July 2026 bank interest-rate statistics, and CBRE Austria's Vienna Living Figures Q2 2026.
Everything a foreign buyer should know before buying in Vienna
The pack also covers the ten percent that lands on top of the price, and whether you are allowed to buy at all.
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