Housing Wealth of Austrian Households

Real estate holdings, i.e. housing wealth and estates in land account for the majority of assets owned by Austrian households. At the same time, the associated mortgage loans constitute the bulk of households’ liabilities. Therefore, detailed data on real estate holdings and real estate financing are highly relevant both from the monetary policy perspective and with regard to the objective of maintaining financial stability. This is why in September 2008 the Governing Council of the ECB decided to initiate a comprehensive project aimed at collecting comparable data on household assets and liabilities across the euro area. All Eurosystem central banks will take part in this project. Many other central banks, including those in the U.S.A., Italy, Spain and Cyprus, have a long tradition of collecting and analyzing such data. As a first contribution by the Oesterreichische Nationalbank (OeNB) to this Eurosystem project, this study provides the first microdata-based assessment of Austrian households’ real estate holdings. In the primary residence category, Austrian households’ average housing wealth is estimated at EUR 130,000 (or at EUR 110,000, excluding the top 1% of observations in the real estate wealth distribution of the primary residence), while their average total housing wealth is estimated to come to EUR 250,000 (or EUR 200,000, excluding the top 1% of observations in the total real estate wealth distribution). The total housing wealth of Austrian households is estimated at a minimum of EUR 690 billion.