Image: Elke Mayr
“Of course, the burden of housing costs has increased in 2022. In a European comparison, however, it is still comparatively cheap in Austria,” says Hanno Lorenz, economist at Agenda Austria. The liberal think tank used data from Eurostat and the Oesterreichische Nationalbank (OeNB) to determine the average share of housing costs in disposable household income in Austria.
Accordingly, housing costs have been around one fifth of household income for years. In 2022, the share was 19.4 percent, after 17.9 percent in the previous year. In the past few years, the proportion has fluctuated between 17.7 and 19.2 percent. The value is currently at the level of 2013. (The proportion is higher for low-income households.)
On average, households in Greece (34.3 percent), Denmark (26.9 percent) and Germany (23.3 percent) spent more on housing than in Austria, even before the start of the inflation wave.
The situation will ease up a bit this year, says economist Lorenz: “While inflation expectations for this year are lower, wages and many social benefits are rising.”
Source: Nachrichten
