1st Edition – 2020 #The residentialVienna market magazine powered by OTTO Immobilien With free guide Tips 25 for selling your property True Values Why apartments in Vienna are a good investment Viennese Property Atlas Facts and figures about all 23 districts 7 € 8.80 Typically 7 Viennese 06655 Viennese people reveal their 0 favourite neighbourhoods 978-3-200-06655- 78320 ISBN 9 Viennese Wonder Bread How real bakers are vital to the city Loving real estate since 1956. www.otto.at/en Editorial 12.4 million. That’s how many results Instagram finds when you search for#Vienna. A 100-page magazine. That – and so much more – is how much content we lovingly and thoughtfully produce when my team and I reflect on our city. We discussed the unique quality of life in Vienna. The historical and modern aspects of our metropolis. Security, education and healthcare. Parks, playgrounds and shared spaces. The Viennese and Vienna’s visitors. What’s more, our research team spent over two years carrying out an in-depth analysis of the residential market. The results are now in your hands: a new magazine about living and life in Vienna! The latest facts about purchase and rental prices in Vienna complete with an overview of the most important new construction projects – including those of our competitors. But above all, this is a magazine that goes beyond facts and figures. Our family business has been active in the Viennese market for over sixty years and we have over twenty years’ experience of writing well-researched market reports about offices, villas, investments and retail in Vienna. Thanks to the ever encouraging and always positive feedback, we have now created this brand-new magazine. I am thoroughly convinced that the Viennese lifestyle and an affection for the city and its neighbourhoods is as important to our national and international clients as information about purchase and rental prices. Which is why #Vienna links exciting market analyses with face-to-face interviews, precisely compiled district comparisons featuring important trends, portraits of typically Viennese people sharing their typically Viennese places – and great insider tips for each of Vienna’s twenty-three districts. Happy reading! Hopefully our passion for my hometown will be infectious and make you (even more of) a fan of Vienna – a city with countless strengths and secrets that is simultaneously a unique metropolis of international standing. Yours sincerely, Dr. Eugen Otto, Editor [email protected] Photo: Christian Chitsazan Cover Illustration: Bomboland Illustration: Chitsazan Cover Christian Photo: Contents Typically Viennese Typical Vienna Seven very Viennese people’s views of their favourite districts. 6 Daily Bread: The Comeback Bread is not just being eaten again, it’s being baked properly, too – with sourdough and in 28 a wood-fired oven. Food Trends Gourmet hotspot: Vienna is 34 at the top table alongside the world’s culinary capitals. Photos: Christian Steinbrenner, Gragger & Cie, ZOOM VP True Values More than just a roof over your head: why buying proper- ty in Vienna means buying a piece of the metropolis. Shout It from 18 the Rooftops 38 Made it to the top: Interview with a penthouse, rooftop 44 IMMOunited founder Roland pool and leafy views. Schmid about price transparency The new projects. on the housing market. Column The famous Viennese author 98 Dietmar Grieser about his involuntary apartment hunt. 48 The Great Viennese Property Atlas Detailed information at district level: the latest facts and figures about Vienna’s residential market by OTTO Immobilien. 6 TYPICALLY VIENNESE ST STEPHEN’S CATHEDRAL. Vienna’s centre’s centre. Its head, Toni Faber, is a passionate networker and sees himself as the village priest of the inner city. IN THE HOOD Typically Viennese Typical Vienna By Nina Glatzel Photos Chris Steinbrenner The cathedral pastor and the brewery boss, the pharmacist and the music expert, the food critic, the winegrower and two sisters of a shoe dynasty: typically Viennese people tell us about their favourite Viennese districts. 7 IN THE FIRST. Toni Faber’s favourite se- cular places (clockwise): TONI FABER Burggarten park, Motto Cathedral Pastor am Fluss and Judenplatz. e’s been to the top of the spire at Hleast fifty-five times. His favourite place is the baptistry at the foot of the south spire. In 1997, at the age of just thirty-five, Toni Fa- ber became the youngest cathedral pastor in the history of St Stephen’s. He is at the helm of Vienna’s number-one tourist attraction: St Stephen’s Cathedral, which records a stagger- ing 6.2 million visitors a year. Toni opened the cathedral doors to modern art and aims to present the Church as ‘real, human and as an equal’. He is on the same familiar terms with the disadvantaged as he is with business Toni Faber is both intermediary and net- bosses, politicians and local heroes. ‘After so worker. He has professional and personal ties many years, I feel like a village priest in the with his high-profile neighbours. Each year city centre,’ he said. He never has an appoint- 1 he blesses 150 business, bar, shop and restau- ment without children running after him or rant openings, a ceremony for which demand passers-by asking him for a selfie. ‘It is a great ‘has grown tremendously’. Toni Faber’s pre- gift to be able to live and work here and to ferred places are in the centre’s lofty heights. play an influential part in city life.’ The rooftop bars at the Ritz-Carlton and Toni Faber is very much involved in his Lamée hotels are among his favourites. ‘I love district’s politics. With city councillors he dis- to be in places where I can still see the cathe- cusses topics like traffic calming, more green dral’s spire.’ The narrow lanes of the old town areas and the influx of tourists. ‘I talk to the ‘where you catch sudden glimpses of the decision makers about what matters to peo- cathedral,’ are also fantastic. He walks or cycles ple.’ More pedestrians, less traffic – that’s the almost everywhere, his path often leading pressing issue for the first district. Toni has him to Judenplatz where he is the primary just come from the ground-breaking ceremo- school’s pastor. A place heavy with history, ny for the redesign of Rotenturmstrasse. The where the Holocaust Memorial now stands, shopping street is being transformed into a it was once the centre of Vienna’s Jewish shared space with planters and fountains. At community. The area around Schwedenplatz Neuer Markt the diggers are also at work. An is also one of Toni’s stamping grounds, where underground car park is to rid the square of his good friend Bernd Schlacher runs the cars and make it into a pedestrian zone. trendy café and restaurant Motto am Fluss. Schwedenplatz is a traffic hub, nightlife hot spot and place where cruise tourists disem- bark. The cathedral pastor is critical of their growing numbers: ‘The cruise tourists flood the city centre but don’t really engage with it.’ Toni Faber’s opinion is sought on this mat- MUST-KNOW NEIGHBOURHOOD ter, too. It’s a dialogue that’s part of his daily STUBENVIERTEL bread: the city centre trying to balance the Wollzeile (‘wool row’) is now deli row. Cheese aficionados go to Der Schweizer, beef needs of residents with those of foreign visi- fans to Plachutta, schnitzel lovers to Figlmüller, tea drinkers to Schönbichler, high- tors who bring in the money is an issue espe- carb eaters to the bakery-cum-bistro Öfferl, non-diabetics to Heiner, nostalgics to cially relevant to the pastor. He has to juggle one of the city’s oldest Aidas. Winegrower Leo Hillinger’s bar even comes with a shop. the requirements of spiritual visitors to the And if you’d rather party in private, you need a key to enter the private Club X! Other lanes in the heart of the Stubenviertel lead to Marco Simoni’s Urban Appetite, Jamie cathedral and those of tourists with their au- Oliver’s restaurant and Michelin-starred chef Konstantin Filippou. dio guides. But if anyone is capable of finding wollzeile.com a solution, it’s him: ‘We want everyone to get along peacefully.’ — 8 TYPICALLY VIENNESE VISION. Christiane Wenckheim opened her Ottakringer Brewery to all Viennese residents CHRISTIANE WENCKHEIM The Ottakringer Boss Nowadays events like the Fesch’Markt – a market for independent designers and ar- tists – and the Vienna Coffee Festival attract nce Ottakring was a suburb of half of Vienna to the Ottakringer Brewery. OVienna where the inns were located,’ says ‘The different floors make the spaces so at- Christiane Wenckheim. ‘The Viennese came tractive,’ said Christiane Wenckheim. ‘The here to eat, drink and be merry.’ The boss of historical brewery architecture looks grungy Ottakringer Getränke AG still sees food and and counterbalances the otherwise so impe- drink as key to the district’s identity. At the rial Vienna.’ In the traditional working-class Ottakringer Brewery’s leased restaurants – district of Ottakring, it blends well with its Plachutta’s Grünspan, Gelbmanns Gaststu- surroundings. ‘Ottakring is multicultural,’ be, Das Liebhart and Bierfink – she most en- says Wenckheim. And that holds great inter- joys sitting in the beer gardens. And she has national appeal. close ties with the coffee-roaster Meinl and Time Out – a trend barometer among the jam-maker Staud’s. The brewery is a hub magazines – includes Ottakring’s Yppenplatz in the district. ‘For the people here, there as one of the world’s fifty coolest neigh- are three things: brewery, church, pub.’ The bourhoods. ‘Chaotic and charming in equal chairperson of the supervisory board has measure, this is a neighbourhood that ming- 16been opening up the company for almost les young and old, Viennese and tourists, twenty years now, starting with personally without losing its unique character,’ is the reaching out to the local community.