Housing Markets in Austria, Germany and Switzerland

Martin Schneider () and Karin Wagner ()
Additional contact information
Karin Wagner: Oesterreichische Nationalbank, Economic Analysis Division

Monetary Policy & the Economy, 2015, issue 1, 42-58

Abstract: Running counter to the sharp rise in house prices and housing wealth observed since the mid- 1990s in the vast majority of European countries, real house prices in Germany and Austria were going down in this period and did not start to rise until 2010 or 2007, respectively. This reflects national idiosyncracies in housing markets and motivated the discussion of relevant peculiarities in, and similarities among, Austria and Germany as well as Switzerland. Among the most important structural features that ensured housing market stability in these three countries during the last decade are well-developed rental markets, low homeownership ratios and conservative lending standards. While the tax systems of Germany and Austria do not encourage indebtedness, Swiss taxpayers benefit from taking on a lot of leverage. Recent house price increases in all three countries under review here can be attributed to various crises-related channels (extremely low interest rates, economic uncertainty, safe-haven effect) as well as to demographic developments, including immigration. The Swiss authorities have already implemented a number of macroprudential measures to safeguard the banking sector.

Keywords: house prices; rental markets; housing finance; taxation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E32 E44 R31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.oenb.at/dam/jcr:5c14703f-adfd-42d9-b1a ... 015_q1_analyses4.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Chapter: Housing markets in Austria, Germany and Switzerland (2016)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:onb:oenbmp:y:2015:i:1:b:4

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
Oesterreichische Nationalbank, Documentation Management and Communications Services, Otto-Wagner Platz 3, A-1090 Vienna, Austria

Access Statistics for this article

Monetary Policy & the Economy is currently edited by Gerhard Fenz and Maria Teresa Valderrama

More articles in Monetary Policy & the Economy from Oesterreichische Nationalbank (Austrian Central Bank) P.O. Box 61, A-1011 Vienna, Austria. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Rita Glaser-Schwarz ().