€ 6200/square meter

Salzburg’s affordable apartments are luxury buildings elsewhere

The prices also speak against a strong increase in the construction of subsidized apartments

(Bild: Tschepp Markus)

Apartments from non-profit housing developers in the city cost around €6,200 per square meter.

The figures presented by the Association of Non-Profit Housing Developers GBV for Salzburg at the beginning of the week were sobering. While 1509 subsidized units were handed over in the province in 2015, the figure for 2023 was only 582. The only 51 units in the provincial capital with a population of 150,000 are precarious.

The one major problem in the city of Mozart is the lack of building plots. Profits of Heimat Österreich, Salzburg, Gswb and Co. are rising because the money earmarked for new construction cannot be spent. The other problem is not a small one either: when construction does take place, it is not easy to find buyers for subsidized property.

For somewhat higher-quality apartments such as those in Berchtesgadenerstrasse, the cost is 6,200 euros.

Wilhelm Fenninger, Obmann-Stellvertreter Verband Gemeinnütziger Wohnbauträger Salzburgs

"This market has collapsed," says Wilhelm Fenninger from the non-profit association. Chairman Stephan Gröger explains why: "For slightly higher-quality apartments like those in Berchtesgadenerstraße, the cost is 6,200 euros." An apartment with 60 square meters and ancillary costs is therefore not available for less than 400,000 euros. In other federal states, you have long since reached the luxury segment.

Property sales down by 35 percent
Speaking of luxury: according to Remax's new major real estate report, apartment transactions in Salzburg slumped by 35 percent to 2,470 last year. Apartments in the upmarket segment bucked the trend and increased in value by 2.8 percent.

Incidentally, Salzburg ranks third in the federal state ranking (behind Vorarlberg and Tyrol) and third in the state capital ranking (behind Bregenz and Innsbruck) in terms of prices. The average price of an apartment throughout Austria is 255,000 euros.