2020 was the second best year after 2019 for the Remax broker network. The most popular property category in 2021 will be building plots.
Building sites in Burgenland are in demand
There is no trace of corona-related difficulties with the Remax broker network. On the contrary: The company, based in Amstetten (Lower Austria), has its second best year in existence in 2020. Only the previous year, 2019, was better for Remax. The fee turnover of 1.725 billion euros was 4.8 percent below 2019, but compared to 2018 the plus was 5.3 percent. In Burgenland and Carinthia there were the largest increases in sales with plus 38.7 percent and plus 22.8 percent respectively.
According to a Remax forecast (survey among real estate experts), building plots will boom in 2021. Their prices will rise the most of all property categories in 2021, namely by 5.4 percent across Austria. The price increase will be greatest for building plots in Lower Austria (plus six percent). On the other hand, it looks bleak for commercial real estate – their prices will fall by around 2.4 percent. Only logistics areas can become more attractive. There is still demand for condominiums in top locations (+ 2.7 percent), but the price trend is positive at 1.9 percent, but subdued.
When asked, Bernd Reikerdorfer, Managing Director of Remax Austria, did not want to predict whether the trend towards rural life brought about by the pandemic is sustainable. That is “very difficult” to assess. He also did not put the exact amount invested in digitization exactly, but at “several hundred thousand euros” for 2021.
In any case, according to Reikersdorfer, the pandemic has exacerbated the issue of financing. “The basic conditions of the banks for the financing have been shifted upwards” – the necessary equity capital must be higher, short-time working and unemployment would bring additional challenges.
In general, according to an extrapolation of the land register entries for 2020 in the previous year, there were around 135,000 bookings on the domestic real estate market, in 2019 there were almost 138,700. Their transaction value in 2020 was 33.5 billion euros (2019: 34.3 billion euros). “In a ten-year comparison that is almost doubled,” explains Reikersdorfer. According to Reikersdorfer, the main reasons for the ongoing high are the lack of investment opportunities and the uncertainties resulting from the Covid19 crisis. In important property groups such as single-family houses, condominiums and land, a decline is to be expected for the full year due to the lack of supply – in the first half of the year there was already a decline of 6.5 percent compared to the same period in 2019.
Remax has set itself ambitious goals for 2021: double-digit sales growth, “massive investments” especially in artificial intelligence and process optimization, as well as “further new locations” especially in metropolitan areas such as Vienna and Salzburg, but also Carinthia are part of it. In addition, the broker network is to be expanded to over 600 (currently around 560) and the market presence in the luxury segment is to be increased.
