Statistik Austria

Direktion Volkswirtschaft

Guglgasse 13, A-1110 Wien

The OOHPI is based on the ‘net acquisitions’ approach, which measures changes in prices paid by households for the acquisition of dwellings that are new to the household sector and changes in other costs related to the ownership, and transfer of ownership, of dwellings.

The OOHPI is broken down into the following expenditure categories:

• O.1. Owner-occupiers’ housing expenditure;
  • O.1.1. Acquisitions of dwellings;
    • O.1.1.1. New dwellings;
      • O.1.1.1.1. Purchases of newly built dwellings;
      • O.1.1.1.2. Self-build dwellings and major renovations;
    • O.1.1.2. Existing dwellings new to households;
    • O.1.1.3. Other services related to the acquisition of dwellings;
  • O.1.2. Ownership of dwellings;
    • O.1.2.1. Major repairs and maintenance;
    • O.1.2.2. Insurance connected with dwellings;
    • O.1.2.3. Other services related to ownership of dwellings.

Households which are owner occupiers.

The main statistical variables are price indices.

The basic unit of statistical observation are transaction prices of dwellings new to the household sector and of other products that the households acquire in their role as owner-occupiers.

Owner occupied dwellings.

Data is available for the whole country.

Data is available from the first quarter of 2010 for all OOH sub-indices except O.1.2.3.

2015=100

The following units are used:

- Index point;
- Percentage change on the same period of the previous year (rates);
- Percentage change on the previous period (rates);
- Percentage share of the total (weights).

The compiled quarterly indexes represent the whole calendar quarter.

Legal acts and other agreements - EU level:

Regulation (EU) 2016/792 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 May 2016 on harmonised indices of consumer prices and the house price index

Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2023/1470 of 17 July 2023 laying down the methodological and technical specifications in accordance with Regulation (EU) 2016/792 of the European Parliament and of the Council as regards the house price index and the owner-occupied housing price index, and amending Commission Regulation (EU) 2020/1148.

Legal acts and other agreements - national level: National Regulation No. 177 from 1 July 2019 'Erstellung von Häuser- und Wohnungspreisindizes'.

Access to administrative data: The access to administrative date has a legal basis in the forementioned national regulation.

Not applicable.

Data is only published at high levels of aggregation, for dwelling transactions as well as for all other OOH PI indices. All OOH PI positions are covering markets with sufficient market participants. Given the substantial number of transactions from many market participants at this level, there are no issues with confidentiality. 

The data is treated according to the rules based on the national regulation on statistical confidentiality.

Release calendars are available and accessible for both the national and Eurostat release dates. 

National release dates are shown on this page. For Eurostat releases please refer to the Eurostat homepage. 

User can refer to Eurostat for detailed data. National releases are to all users t+85 days after the end of the reporting quarter. 

Quarterly (OOHPI) and annually (weights)

Quarterly dissemination for the indices and annual update of weights.

The data is published quarterly since 2015. Publication of Q4 data is accompanied by a press release summarising the index performance for the concluding year.

The data for Austria is published on the Statistics Austria Website from 2015 onwards.

The data is included in the Eurostat database and Statistics Austrias statistical database "STATcube".

Micro-data is not disseminated.

None.

Documentation available (Full German Version, English Summary Version).

Not available.

All data are checked for completeness and consistency with OOH PI / HPI statistical concepts and definitions.

The quality of the OOH PI is routinely reviewed using a framework that is based on the "Technical manual on owner-occupied housing and house price indices" and the European Statistical System definition of quality.

The OOH informs about price changes of acquisition and ownership of dwellings. Target audience are researchers, NSIs, ECB, national banks, real estate offices and the public.

Not available.

All relevant expenditure categories defined in the OOH regulation are covered, except O.1.2.3.

The OOH is perceived to be accurate and to reflect well the developments of owner occupied housing expenditures and prices in Austria.

Not available.

Care is taken to not systematically process the data in any way that could introduce a bias to the index. 

Data are sent according to national and EU regulation for quarterly indices: index updates are released 85 days after the end of the reference period and weight updates are provided by June, 15.

Faster publication is not feasible due lag in the processing and collection process of notary deed data. 

Looking at the period between Q3-2020 and Q1-2023 on average the data was provided at t+84, one day before the legal deadline.  

Not available.

Not available.

The OOH PI may partly overlap the scope of the HPI. However, both indices cover a different set of transactions and any comparison of the two indices should be done with this in mind.

All figures are checked for internal consistency.

The HPI and the OOH PI require approximately 1.5 full time equivalents. Due to the significant overlap in work and changing priorities, the allocation of this time to each individual index (HPI/OOH) is about equal.

The HPI data is subject to periodic and systematic revisions. The most recent quarter is released preliminary and finalized at the release of the subsequent quarter. 

The planned revision are necessary due to the time lag in data delivery. Only t+175 after the reporting period near complete coverage is achieved. 

See below.

Index numbers are compiled using administrative sources obtained from the fiscal authorities and data from contracts stored at the land register (notary deeds) as well as information from CPI and Construction Price Index. Due to administrative circumstances it is necessary to purchase the notary deed data from third party enterprises.

Administrative sources: Register of buildings and flats, Register of taxes on transactions of land and dwelling property. Direct sources: Price collection from construction companies, insurances and manufacturers of prefabricated houses. 

Weights are based on National Accounts data, transaction data and on data provided by construction statistics.

Data collection is done quarterly.

Collection details: Administrative data are collected through the use of an electronic protocol established between Statistik Austria and the fiscal authorities. Company data are collected via telephone and email questionnaires.

Data validation procedures: Data are checked for internal consistency.

See below.

See below.

OOHPI is a Laspeyres-type price index.

Each repricing subindex is split into three regions - Vienna, regional capital cities and the rest. 

These indices are aggregated to the subindices OOH1111 and OOH112. OOH1111 also includes prefabricated houses. OOH1112 is derived from the construction price index, and OOOH121 and OOH122 are sourced from the CPI. These are then aggregated hierarchically towards OOH1.

Weight figures are annually revised (on the basis of the most recently available National Accounts data).

Weights are generally available t-1 year for transactions and t-2 years for national accounts data.

Price updating to the fourth quarter is omitted in the timeseries as of 2023, but there are plans to introduce price updating for the whole time series with a revision in 2024.  

Each index is linked to the last quarter of the previous year. 

See below.

First binding contract.

VAT is included in the price of newly built dwellings.

Other taxes are not included in the price of dwellings.

The transaction price is used for the index calculation. Subsidies or fiscal incentives are not taken into account. Loans are part of the transaction price as they dampen the transaction price.

Land is currently included in the weights of OOH1111 and OOH112. Prices also include the land component. 

Housing cooperatives are only covered in case there is a sales transaction, for example for existing dwellings new to the household sector.

Conditions for non-market transaction and sales between relatives are noted by our data provider. The former are very rare, but in principal included but may be removed at the outlier check. The latter are removed. 

Multi-object transactions are included in the case that the contract lists independent prices for each object. 

If there is no independent price, most multi-object transactions are removed for one of the following reasons: 

1) because they do not meet the size filter applied to flats and houses, or

2) because a unique match with the building and dwelling fails. 

Multi-object transaction from private households are rare. 

Fractional transactions are excluded by the following means:

1) most fractional transaction are classified as a special category by the data provider and are not used to calculate the HPI

2) joint purchases of fractions in a single contract are not split (e.g. when two people jointly purchase one dwelling, it is one transaction)

3) any other special cases may be decided upon by analysing the data providers annotations of the observation. 

See below.

The construction price index and the CPI are using the geometric mean of the price relatives (Jevons) as the elementary aggregate formulae.

Replacements are an issue primarily for the CPI, as the construction price index tracks specific prices for tasks needed in the construction process from "call for tender" forms. 
For the CPI for products that are unavailable for up to two consecutive months, may be imputed by representative price movements. If products are missing longer that this time, a representative replacement is found and on a case by case basis, necessary quality adjustments are conducted. 

Replacements can also occur for pre-fabricated houses. Depending on the change of characteristics of the items, either quality-adjustment or bridged-overlap is used. The overlap price and the characteristics are part of the survey. 

Quality adjustments are conducted for prefabricated houses and during the CPI calculation in case the characteristics of an replacement item do not match the initial item. The value of the quality change is estimated by a suitable method (expert judgement, inquiry/research, hedonics) and the items price comparison adjusted accordingly.  

Overall the price observations used for the OOH PI are reliably available. In case prices are missing, they are imputed by representative index movements depending on the situation, of comparable products, higher level index aggregates or other regions. 

The CPI in principle collects discounted prices in case of common sales that are important for specific item groups (e.g. seasonal sales for textiles, furniture etc.). For OOH PI calculations discounts and inducements are not included, as discounts are unlikely to be representative for the selected groups of construction material and services or insurance. 

Zero prices have not occurred in OOH PI related positions. 

The CPI and the survey of prefabricated houses measures prices including VAT. The construction price index does not include VAT. 

There is no seasonal adjustment or time series decomposition.

None.