Investment Property Report 2023

30 potential tenants for a single apartment.

in Vienna, and I see only one reasonable solution: An owner who refurbishes his building to meet modern standards should be able to exit the benchmark system and rent at market conditions. That would represent an incentive for invest- ments in the billions. Pöltl: In fact, what we are doing is linking support for tenants to the building’s construc- tion year instead of focusing on social criteria. That helps a lot of people a little bit, but doesn’t provide the necessary assistance to people in real need.

But housing must be affordable.

Prunbauer: Cooperatives and municipalities are responsible for 60 per cent of the leases in Austria. No one can tell me that isn’t enough to provide affordable apartments for all vulnerable families. Private landlords shouldn’t be required to take on this responsibility, in part with lower rental income than the cooperative or municipal apartments that are supported with tax funds.

Would this approach also be suitable to safeguard the financing for decarbonisation?

Dornaus: It would, in any event, be an alternati- ve, as part of a revision of the Austrian Tenancy Act – like in Germany, the possibility to transfer the costs of thermal improvements to tenants. In the end, tenants also benefit from these improvements through lower energy costs. Other instruments would be subsidies, tax relief or, probably, a combination of the two because these types of cost transfers would be rather difficult to accomplish in today’s environment with benchmark rents. „ Similar to Germany, the transfer of the costs for thermal improvements to tenants. Christine Dornaus “ Prunbauer: We already have a number of tax-re- lated models at our disposal, for example one involving the deduction of partial depreciation charges. But we need to make sure owner-occu- piers aren’t left behind. As you know, this group of property owners is not really small. Pöltl: But financing isn’t the only problem. We need to know what measures will be acceptable for meeting ESG requirements – these measu- res must be technically feasible, and the timing

Attorney Martin Prunbauer is President of the Austrian Buil- ding and Landowners Association.

Dornaus: Here there are actually a number of con- tradictions. A new tenancy law that covers all rental apartments could – through the integrated control measures – also increase the social accuracy of support for disadvantaged tenant groups.

Erath: The benchmark system is generally outdated when you consider the way it is applied