SPÖ presents brave plans for affordable living from 2025!

SPÖ presents brave plans for affordable living from 2025!

Wien, Österreich - On June 2, 2025, the SPÖ (Social Democratic Party of Austria) held a press conference to present its plans for affordable living. The event took place at 10:00 a.m. and was led by prominent party representatives, including Vice Chancellor and Wohn Minister Andreas Babler, Vice Club boss Julia Herr and the residential building spokeswoman and chair of the tenant association Vienna, Elke Hanel-Torsch. A central concern of the event was to combat rising pressure on tenants.

In the press conference, the essential measures were presented, which were determined in the new government program to contain rental prices. According to Kontrast , rents in the regulated area have been frozen for 2025. This ensures that many rents can benefit from limited rent increases by 2027, since the increases are limited to a maximum of 1 % in 2026 and 2 % in 2027.

measures in detail

The intervention in the free rents, which includes new buildings, official apartments and rentable single -family houses. From 2025, landlords may only increase the rent by half of the inflation if this is over 3 %. According to estimates, an average of 3.16 % would be increased without these measures, which saves around 138 million euros to the rental. The initiatives concern more than 1 million rental apartments in Austria, including 516,000 category and guideline rents as well as 697,000 cooperative apartments.

A concrete example from the announcements shows that tenants of an old building with a monthly rent of 700 euros can save a total of 993 euros. The time limit for rental apartments should also be extended from three to five years. Furthermore, the funding for residential construction should in future only be used for the construction of new social apartments.

The development of rental prices

The discussion about rental prices is particularly relevant because they have increased significantly in Austria since 2006. According to Infina , the average rent per square meter (without operating costs) increased from EUR 3,78 in 2006 to 7.40 euros in 2024, which corresponds to an increase of 96 %. Although there are cheaper rental prices in municipal buildings and cooperative apartments, these are not included in the average prices.

Although rents in the high price segment are stagnating on the free rental apartment market, conurbation, such as Tyrol, show high rent increases. Factors such as population growth and the lack of new buildings could increase the rental level in the medium term. In April 2023, the guideline rents for new contracts were also increased by 8.6 % and affect around 750,000 tenants.

Despite the measures taken, the topic of rental prices remains complex. The forecasts show possible plateau formation in prices, but still rising rents in top layers. High demand, rising raw material prices and slightly increased inflation play an important role in this context.