Statistik Austria

Direktion Volkswirtschaft

Guglgasse 13, A-1110 Wien

HPIs give comparable measures for dwellings prices. They are calculated according to a harmonised approach and a single set of definitions.

The House Price Index (HPI) is a quarterly indicator that measures the changes in the dwellings transaction prices that households acquire on the market. Prices include land value.

The data on the HPI is provided in the form of an overall index number comprising two sub-indexes: Purchases of newly built dwellings and Purchases of existing dwellings. The data is based on harmonized definitions and concepts included in the Owner occupied Housing (OOH) Regulation and described in the OOH Technical Manual.

Index numbers, weights and growth rates are made available at the level of detail established by the Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2020/1148 of 31 July 2020.

ESA 2010 sector S.14 (Household sector).

The HPI covers all transactions of dwellings made by households regardless of its final use. This index thus covers not only the transactions that are new to the household sector but also all that are traded between households. While the index for Purchases of newly built dwellings covers the former situation, the index for Purchases of existing dwellings covers the latter case. Index figures for the purchase of newly built and existing dwellings are compiled on the basis of full transaction prices, which are collected through the use of a fiscal administrative data source and a subcontractor (prices recorded at the time of the binding contract). Transaction prices include the value of land.
The HPI is a chain-linked Laspeyres-type price index, presented in the form of index numbers (current reference year: 2015) and quarterly growth rates. The HPI is weighted by the value of dwelling transactions (newly built and existing) sector (gross concept applied, weights data include the value of land).

The basic statistical unit of the HPI is private households.

The target population is the set of all transactions of dwellings purchased by households.

Data are available for the country as a whole.

Data are available since the first quarter of 2010 for all index series.

The HPI is a chain-linked Laspeyres-type price index using the year 2015 as reference year.

Index figures with reference year 2015 are available, as well as quarterly and annual growth rates in percentage. Weights are given as parts in 1000 and in national currency.

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 2019.07.01 '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 example new and existing dwellings or existing houses and apartments. 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. 

Releases are announced in the release calendar. As of 2022 there are scheduled press releases in March and September. To obtain data, users can refer to Eurostat for detailed data, or refer to the project website, or use Statistics Austrias database STATcube. National releases are to all users t+85 days after the end of the reporting quarter. 

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 / HPI statistical concepts and definitions.

Details on the Quality Guidelines of Statistics Austria are available in German and English.

The quality of the HPI 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 HPI responds to the needs of all users interested in the behaviour of transaction prices in the house price market on national level.

Not available.

All relevant expenditure categories defined in the regulation. 

The HPI is perceived to be accurate and to reflect well the overall behaviour of the housing market in Austria. 

Not applicable.

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 indexes 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. 

Dwelling Sales information is preliminary for 8 quarters. The most recent five quarters include an estimate, the remaining three quarters are preliminary. 

Unplanned revisions are documented in the released index number files on our website (German only)

The planned revisions are necessary due to the time lag in data delivery. Only t+175 after the reporting period sufficient coverage is achieved. This issue is also important for the comparability of the transaction numbers and volumes and thus a window of 8 quarters us preliminary and for the 5 most recent quarters estimation is used. 

See below.

Index numbers are compiled using administrative sources obtained from the fiscal authorities and the land register (notary deeds). Due to administrative circumstances it is necessary to purchase the notary deed data from third party enterprises. 

The source is the same as for the prices. The sum of transaction prices, overall, and for newly built and existing dwellings are used as weights.

The source is the same as for the prices. The sum of transaction prices, overall, and for newly built and existing dwellings, as well as transaction counts are available. 

Data collection is done quarterly.

Collection details: Administrative data are collected through the use of an electronic protocol established between Statistics Austria, fiscal authorities and a private data provider. 

Data validation procedures: Data are checked for internal consistency.

See below.

See below.

HPI is a Laspeyres-type price index.

Each subindex - existing houses, new flats and existing flats - is split into three regions - Vienna, regional capital cities and the rest. 

These indices are independently aggregated to the two subindices, and the overall HPI.  

Weight figures are annually revised (on the basis of the transaction dataset) and price updated to the last quarter of year t-1.

Weights are derived in t-1. 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. 

Hedonic Repricing is used for newly built and existing flats and existing houses. 

The Purchases of newly built dwellings index is compiled using hedonic repricing.  For the base model a log linear specification is used in which the logarithm of price is used as dependent variable. Parameters are estimated using ordinary least squares. The statistical model is updated every year.

Not applicable. 

A stratification approach, based on geographical area (Vienna, cities and urban areas) and dwelling type (flats and houses), is used in the compilation of indexes on new and existing dwellings.

See below.

Date of the last signature on the official contract, that is stored in the land registry ('final binding contract').

VAT is included in the price of new dwellings.

Taxes other than VAT are not included in the price of dwellings.

We are not aware of any subsidies that would directly affect purchase prices of dwellings. Subsidies for acquisition or construction of dwellings mostly take the form of special financing conditions (affordable loans).

The price of land is included in both prices and weights.

Housing cooperatives are only covered in case there is a sales transaction.

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. 

For plot size and living area there are set boundaries for houses and flats derived from the statistical distribution. 

Prices and the Price to size ratio are also constraint by lower and upper boundaries derived from the statistical distribution. 

Furthermore the transaction price, and the hedonic value estimate of a property obtained for the repricing price index are compared and observations are removed when a ratio of five is exceeded in either direction. This prevents properties from entering the index, where the combination of characteristics and price are so unusual, that the model can not provide a suitable price estimate. 

Not applicable. 

No adjustments other than quality adjustment are applied to the HPI data.

None.