8000 empty units?

“Not one apartment comes onto the market this way”

In Salzburg, there could be around 8,000 empty apartments - young people are paying very high rental costs.(Bild: Tröster Andreas)

There is a lot of criticism of Salzburg's vacancy tax - a look at Innsbruck is helpful for two reasons and above all shows that even knowing the exact vacancy rate is no guarantee that properties will be mobilized.

Innsbruck is a role model when it comes to determining vacancy rates. The city tracks down vacant properties through precise monitoring. Half of the apartments have been checked. It is now known that an estimated 8.8 percent of all units are vacant. With 79,000 apartments, this results in a vacancy rate of 7,000. A look at Innsbruck also shows that even knowing about vacancies is no guarantee that these properties can be mobilized, i.e. put on the market. As in Salzburg, only a handful of owners of vacant properties have come forward one year after the introduction of the statutory vacancy tax.

Kay Dankl (KPÖ Plus) believes that Salzburg's vacancy rate is similar to that of Innsbruck and that there are probably 8,000 unoccupied units. "In addition, unlike Innsbruck, Salzburg has many festival guests who have apartments," says Dankl. The way the current vacancy tax is being handled, Dankl is worried: "We won't get a single apartment on the market this way!"

According to the office of Housing Provincial Councillor Martin Zauner, 62 municipalities in the province have now issued an ordinance for the municipal levy on second homes. Good. But even there, the state's hands are tied by law: "The state is the supervisory authority, we will support the municipalities as best we can, but we are not vacancy detectives."