Dwellings, buildings

Housing is a basic need for everyone as well as an important social and economic matter of fact. It is expensive to construct or buy a privately owned home or a freehold dwelling but it becomes less of a financial burden currently. Renting a dwelling is combined with ongoing higher costs. In general these costs belong to the most important items of expenditures of a household. In the course of the Micro census surveys, which focus on “employment” and are conducted weekly by a trained team of interviewers from Statistics Austria, respondents are also asked a number of questions about their housing situation, in particular their housing costs. The results of these surveys not only provide social statistical figures that are of immediate significance; they are also incorporated into the consumer price index.

The construction of dwellings is not only significant for creating extremely long lasting consumer goods, however; it is also important as a general economic driving force. Builder or industrial property developers plan and implement projects ranging from residential buildings to all other structural engineering projects. Even during the planning and preparation stage, these projects have an impact on the business cycle. This is why data on dwellings with building permits as well as data on the authorised gross floor areas of all buildings are taken into account in Eurostat’s short term business statistics.

To what extent new buildings are necessary, not just for the long-term and qualitative renewal of the stock of buildings and dwellings but also as a net addition for improved quantitative provision of households and other economic units, this only can be concluded from determination of the stock which needs to be constantly updated. While ten-year intervals were sufficient in this regard in the past (formerly “Housing Census”, most recently “Building and Dwelling Census”  with the Population Census at the turn of each decade), the utilisation of electronic media and their application in e-government facilitate short term maintenance of the Address, Building and Dwelling Register.