Statistics Austria

Directorate Social Statistics, Living Conditions and Social Protection

Guglgasse 13, 1110 Vienna, Austria

Statistics about the construction of buildings and dwellings, building permits related to new buildings only (excluding rebuilding, reconstruction, extension, building up, a.s.o.).

Variable 150101 - number of permitted dwellings in new residential buildings (with one and two or more dwellings)

Variable 150102 - useful floor area or equivalent (sqm) in new buildings (residential buildings with one and  two or more dwellings, residences for communities, office buildings and contigued - in the sum of all remaining - non-residential buildings).

CPA (Statistical Classification of Products by Activity in the European Economic Community)

Variable 150101 - authorized dwellings, related to: new one-dwelling buildings (CPA 41.00.11), new two- and more dwelling buildings (CPA 41.00.12 and 41.00.13)

Variable 150102 - useful floor area or equivalent (sqm), related to: new one-dwelling buildings (CPA 41.00.11), new two- and more dwelling buildings (CPA  41.00.12 and 41.00.13), new residences for communities (CPA 41.00.14), new office buildings (CPA 41.00.23) and contigued the (sum of all) remaining non-residential buildings (CPA 41.00.21, 41.00.22, 41.00.24, 41.00.25, 41.00.26, 41.00.27, 41.00.28, 41.00.29)

Building permits data cover authorized buildings in terms of facilities and size measures (square metres) and in terms of the contained number of dwellings and their facilities and size measures (square metres). For the variables of the STSCONS-building-permits the population is restricted to the construction of new buildings (excluding rebuilding, reconstruction, extension, building up, a.s.o.).

Due to the Classification CPA the data of Variable 150101- authorized dwellings - is related to new residential buildings with one (CPA 41.00.11) and with two or more dwellings (CPA 41.00.12 and 41.00.13)

Due to the Classification CPA the data of Variable 150102- useful floorspace (sqm) - is related to new residential buildings with one (CPA 41.00.11) and with two or more dwellings (CPA 41.00.12 and 41.00.13), to new residences for communities (CPA 41.00.14), to new office buildings (CPA 41.00.23) and contigued the (sum of all) remaining new non-residential buildings (CPA 41.00.21, 41.00.22, 41.00.24, 41.00.25, 41.00.26, 41.00.27, 41.00.28, 41.00.29)

In Austria a building permission is an authorization that must be granted by a local government before the construction of new units can legally occur. Statistical evaluations about permits are generally related to (frequencies and averages of) buildings and (contained) dwellings (for STSCONS-building-permits the obsevation/monitoring is related to new buildings only excluding permissions for rebuilding, reconstruction, extension, building up, a.s.o.).

The definitions of CR 1503/2006 are profoundly applied for both indicators.

Reporting unit: Building authorities (local authorities) of the communities in Austria.

Observation unit(s): Authorised new buildings and contained dwellings (excluding rebuilding, reconstruction, extension, building up, a.s.o.)

Authorised new buildings and contained dwellings  (excluding rebuilding, reconstruction, extension, building up, a.s.o.) in reference / reporting periods (quarterly).

Due to the Classification CPA the data of Variable 150101- authorized dwellings - is related to new residential buildings with one (CPA 41.00.11) and with two or more dwellings (CPA 41.00.12 and 41.00.13)

Due to the Classification CPA the data of Variable 150102- useful floorspace (sqm) - is related to new residential buildings with one (CPA 41.00.11) and with two or more dwellings (CPA 41.00.12 and 41.00.13), to new residences for communities (CPA 41.00.14), to new office buildings (CPA 41.00.23) and contigued the (sum of all) remaining new non-residential buildings (CPA 41.00.21, 41.00.22, 41.00.24, 41.00.25, 41.00.26, 41.00.27, 41.00.28, 41.00.29)

Totality of the national territory

Variable 150101 - authorized dwellings in new residential buildings: 2000 and later, quarterly data

Variable 150102 - useful floor area or equivalent (sqm) in new buildings: 2005 and later, quarterly data (estimates for the reporting periods before this are currently not possible due to too many uncertainties)

Not applicable.

Number of dwellings and useful net floor aeras within the building

Quarterly routine

Legal basis: Law concerning the Address, Buildings- and Dwellings-Register, Gebäude- und Wohnungsregistergesetz (Änderung Vermessungsgesetz), BGBl. I Nr. 1/2013 (BGBl. I Nr. 125/2009, BGBl. I Nr. 9/2004)

Obligation on units to provide data: Local authorities (building authorities) are obliged to provide the complete information in time.

EU regulation (current and historical) 

Recently no directly transmission to other international organisations (like OECD, the UN etc.)

Dissemination of terms and conditions under which official statistics are produced, including confidentiality of individual responses:

The legal basis is/are: — The general obligation to publish statistics and the strict provision on statistical confidentiality is regulated by the “Federal Statistics Act 2000” ("Bundesstatistikgesetz 2000") in the consolidated version of "Bundesstatistikgesetz 2000 - konsolidierte Fassung 2009” BGBl. I No. 163/1999 as amended by BGBl. I No. 136/2001, BGBl. I No. 71/2003, BGBl. I No. 92/2007, BGBl. I No. 125/2009. — The protection of personal data is covered by the “Data Protection Act 2000” ("Datenschutzgesetz 2000 (DSG 2000)", Austrian Federal Law Gazette I No. 165/1999 as amended by BGBl. I No. 136/2001, BGBl. I No. 13/2005, BGBl. I No. 2/2008, BGBl. I No. 133/2009, BGBl. I No. 135/2009).

Confidential data are not published.

Data are transmitted to Eurostat and are disseminated nationally considering a predefined release calendar. Therein revisions are announced too.

(Related to the domestic serial) available on the website of Statistics Austria.

Simultaneous release to all interested parties: No users have prior access to the data before the general release. Data are made available to all users simultaneously. (Beside the communities sevral other public authorities have partly resp. limited access to the data source of the Address-, Building- and Dwelling-Register.)

Identification of internal government access to data before release: No prior access before official data release. The „Federal Statistics Act 2000“ ("Bundesstatistikgesetz 2000 - konsolidierte Fassung 2009") explicitly states in §30 (3) the obligation of STATISTICS AUSTRIA to inform without delay the Federal Minister responsible for the subject matter concerned about the results of statistical surveys and to publish them simultaneously.

Transmission to Eurostat and further use of the statistics: The data are transmitted quarterly to EUROSTAT (via eDAMIS using SDMX Converter for coding). Data is also published in Austria. Beside this, annual results are also published in Austria (adding substantial attributes).

Quarterly (see 8.1 resp. 8.2)

New releases are published on the website of Statistics Austria.

Mainly due to underreporting recently there are no press releases linked to this data.

The length of the time series at the moment go back to

• the year 2000 - number of permitted dwellings,

• to the year 2005 - sqm of useful floor area (estimates for the reporting periods before this are currently not possible due to too many uncertainties)

The presentation deals with absolute figures. All data are published quarterly.

The official release of the data is not accompanied by comments from a Government Ministry.

Name of national paper publications: The data should be available on a yearly basis in a publication (mainly due to underreporting not carried out at the moment)

Name of national electronic dissemination: The data is published quarterly on the website of STATISTICS AUSTRIA.

website

No micro-data-dissemination

Doe to adequate provided (reported) informations see 10.2.

Basically the data are sent to Eurostat to be used in European aggregates or to be released (also) as (part of the) national data.

official report.

official report

Basically implementation of quality assurance - see website.

Special implementation of quality assurance - see 11.2 Quality management - documentation.

The figures of 2005 untill 2009 are restricted because of underreporting. Overall, the current reporting periods (starting in 2010) provide valid figures for the selection of results currently available on the Internet. But there are restrictions on the detail of the representation. Because of the statistical methodological approaches to the assessment of the reporting delays, greater revision-related changes could occur in the case of lower aggregated results.

In order to assess the consistency of the approval data, a comparison with the housing promotion reports of the Länder is used, whereby there are limitations in comparability due to different background reasons (see 15.3).

Website

The data are regarded as being highly relevant.

Users:

- Institutions: government departments, ECB, national central bank, international organisations, etc.

- Social actors: employers' organisations, trade unions, lobby groups, etc.

- Media

- Researchers & students

- Enterprises/businesses

- Internal users

- Eurostat

Basically high user satisfaction. Amendments are necessary due to underreporting of the results of 2005 till 2009.

Overall, the current reporting periods starting with 2010 provide valid figures for the selection of results currently available on the Internet. Because of the statistical methodological approaches to the assessment of the reporting delays, greater revision-related changes could occur in the case of lower aggregated results. Before 2010 there are limitations because of underreporting.

Gaps in the length of time series of Variable 150102 - useful floorspace (sqm): First basic year = 2005. (Estimates for earlier reporting periods are not possible due to too many uncertainties and imponderables.)

Administrative data, under-coverage of the data from 2005 till 2009 because of underreporting

Not relevant.

For the last 3 years estimates corresponding to the late (retroactive) registrations have to be done. Because of incomplete data at the time of first compilation (for the recent reference periods resp. quarters initially about (at least) 80% of expected permits are missing) the data are estimated using grossing up to an estimated total for the last 3 years systematically. Results older than 3 years are considered as final (although there are still slight/limited numbers of late registrations). The shares of previous late registration serve as a basis for calculating grossing-up factors. Methodological changes are announced on STATISTICS AUSTRIA’s website.

Revisions are usually carried out with the annual financial statements, i.e. the fourth quarter. 

Permitted dwellings in new residential buildings, alteration in consequence of revision done at the end of the reporting year 2022. Currently existing data extracts: from 2005 to 2009 - as of 2021-06-15, from 2010 to 2016 - as of 2022-03-15, from 2017 to 2022 - as of 2023-03-15. 

Comparison of the new figures based on the reference date March 15, 2023 with the previous (partially estimated) results of the following data extracts: Figures from 2017 to 2021 - reference date March 15, 2022, for the 1st quarter of 2022 June 15, 2022, for the 2nd quarter 2022 September 15, 2022, for the 3rd quarter 2022 December 15, 2022.

The length of time between data availability and the event or phenomenon they describe is about 90 days.

Basically there are no differences in timeliness between the different aggregation levels or between the statistical variables.

No time lag

The same statistical concepts are applied in the entire national territory (no discrepancies)

For Variable 150101 - authorized dwellings in new residential buildings with one (CPA 41.00.11) and two or more dwellings (CPA 41.00.12 and 41.00.13) comparable (nationally) time series are available in different frequencies (it might go longer back in history).

For Variable 150102 - authorized useable floor areas in new buildings - there is no data before reference year 2005 available. At present, estimates are not yet possible due to too many uncertainties.

Ad hoc comparisons with data about the number of dwellings with assurances of receipt of (public) subsidies for house building by the government (regional administration body; German designation: Förderungszusicherungen gemäß Jahresberichte der Länder zur Wohnbauförderung). In order to assess the consistency of the approval data, a comparison with the housing promotion reports of the Länder is used. The housing promotion reports contain only those apartments for which new public funding has been secured (incl. Start-up, reconstruction and rebuilding activities). It is pointed out once again that the data of the approval statistics does not include the start-up, rebuilding, rebuilding activity of the federal capital. In addition to publicly funded units, apartments are also included here.

In accordance with the logic the total building permits granted (construction measures statistics) were (clearly) above the subsidy promises of the Länder over all reporting periods. In the years 2005 to 2009, both time series showed an at least similar increasing development. The different course in the years 2010 to 2012 is due to the omission of earmarking of housing funds introduced in 2009: Subsidized housing construction has fallen sharply since this period, but from 2012 to 2014 it shows a comparatively similar time frame Development like all apartments with building permission (except for additions, construction and conversion work in Vienna). After 2014, the funding commitments again showed a downward trend to a level that basically remained the same from 2015 due to only slight increases. The comparatively high number of approvals in 2011 could be directly related to the need to clean up the register due to the 2011 register census carried out as of 31 October. (In contrast to the statistics on construction measures, the results of the funding commitments for 2019 were not yet available at the time of reporting.)

See 15.3 (Coherence - cross domain).

In confrontation with other data sets there are less facilities and therefore only minimum assumptions or mainly comparisons to previous data possible.

Variable 150101 and Variable 150102 are coherent for common types of bueldings respectively dwellings.

Costs

Reg. (EC) No 223/2009 on European statistics stipulates cost effectiveness as statistical principle; however, there is no legal obligation to provide cost and burden information in quality reports. Such an obligation is also not covered by sectoral legislation. Due to the fact that consistent standards and definitions for cost reporting are currently not available and are yet to be developed by the RDG-expert group there is a high risk of misrepresentation and distortions when comparing costs of statistics production across countries. Statistics Austria will, hence, not provide any cost information until agreed harmonised reporting standards are in place.

Burden

Beyond what has been mentioned before: Although burden is existing for (the "respondents" resp. for) the staff of the Austrian municipalities (building authorities) handling the acquisition of the adminstrative data, information about these activities are not available resp. hardly leviable.

• routine (major) revisions

Routine revisions are related to the data of a completed reporting year (carried out in collaboration with the data transmission of the 4th quarter).

• non-scheduled revisions

Amendments are necessary due to the current underreporting.

The same revision policy is applied to data released nationally and transmitted to Eurostat.

This revision policy is corresponding to the official policy of STATISTICS AUSTRIA and is mentioned in the national report/documentation of the quality management (see 11.2).

Because of incomplete data at the time of first compilation (for the recent reference periods resp. quarters initially about 80% of expected permits are missing) the data are estimated using grossing up to an estimated total for the last 3 years (see item 14 Accuracy). Results older than 3 years are considered as final (although there are still slight/limited numbers of late registrations). The shares of previous late registration serve as a basis for calculating grossing-up factors. Methodological changes are announced on STATISTICS AUSTRIA’s website.

Routine revisions are done at the end of a reporting year. Presently These revisions range from the 3rd quarter of the recent reporting year 2019 back to the base year 2005. To which extent the figures are altered is reportet in item 13.3 Accuracy, non-sampling error.

Non-scheduled revisions: If necessary together with a recent released quarter the previous one might be revised.

Within our release calender (preview of all our publications) on our homepage all users are informed of major (routine) revisions.

Type of source is administrative register maintained by the local / building authorities (Address, Buildings and Dwellings Register).

The periodicity of data collection is ongoing / continuous.

All characteristics about the building and dwellings (about the constructor) are legally based (administrative register). The data collection media is a software application via internet for on-line data collection, standardised XML-interface for inputting data collected with the aid of other software applications.

Data validations should be presented according to format and file structure and intra-dataset checks (based at the level of some records up to the entire file). This includes mainly  "intra-domain inter-source checks" (mirror checks). It includes revision checks, time series checks and (intra-source) inter-dataset checks (known correlations between different phenomena).

Comparison are done between results from correlated macro-data sources of the "Förderungsberichte der Bundesländer" (plausibility or consistency checks between the data available and the data / information available outside the Institution).

The indicators are validated against each other generally respectively basically.

Missing data are estimated corresponding to the “retroactive registrations”

Mainly comparison to previous data are done. Currently all the data is provided in absolute figures, resently there is no seasonal or calender adjustments done.

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