From January to March this year, significantly fewer apartments were approved for construction than a year ago, but the rapid decline in residential construction activity from previous quarters did not continue. According to Statistics Austria, 10,700 apartments were approved in the first quarter, which was 10.9 percent less than in the same quarter last year.
Compared to the fourth quarter of 2023, there was a slight increase. Nevertheless, “the number of Building permits for apartments in Austria has never been as low as in the first three months of 2024 in any first quarter since the time series began in 2010,” said Statistics Austria Director General Tobias Thomas, according to a press release on Thursday. Compared to the record value of the first quarter of 2021 with 19,850 approved apartments, there was a decrease of 46.1 percent. In the previous quarter (fourth quarter of 2023), 10,100 apartments were approved for construction.
Around 21 percent of the approved residential units in the first quarter were new single- and two-family houses, around 52 percent were residential buildings with three or more apartments, and around a quarter were existing buildings through additions, extensions or conversions. According to Statistics Austria, no results for Vienna are yet included in this addition, extension and conversion work; they will be included as soon as there are enough comparable quarters.
