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Concrete Gold

 Poster: A snowHead
Poster: A snowHead
Concrete gold of the Alps

The most beautiful places in Austria's mountains are being concreted over and why politicians are often powerless to face this building boom.

In the Austrian Alps, more and more luxury properties are being built for the rich - the best locations are being built. A holiday home or a chalet is particularly popular with wealthy EU citizens.

Buying is not to live there , it is primarily about making the most profitable investment possible

https://tvthek.orf.at/profile/Am-Schauplatz/1239/Am-Schauplatz-Betongold-der-Alpen/14072091
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 Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Well at least you can't blame Britons anymore.
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 Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
And I thought this was to Whitegold's return!
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stanton wrote:
Concrete gold of the Alps

The most beautiful places in Austria's mountains are being concreted over and why politicians are often powerless to face this building boom.

In the Austrian Alps, more and more luxury properties are being built for the rich - the best locations are being built. A holiday home or a chalet is particularly popular with wealthy EU citizens.

Buying is not to live there , it is primarily about making the most profitable investment possible

https://tvthek.orf.at/profile/Am-Schauplatz/1239/Am-Schauplatz-Betongold-der-Alpen/14072091


No brainer to buy knowing mugs will rent. Austria is at the botttom of the pile when it comes to ownership
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 Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Austria has a low population density and can easily double or triple its ski stations.

Plenty space for more cribs.
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Conservation, perhaps a rare example where the UK has led Europe.

By and large we have done a good job in the UK of protecting our best landscapes from sprawl. Across the alps by comparison landscape scale harm has been caused by 70 years of urbanisation, earth moving and of course the development of ski infrastructure.

Even the alpine national parks and protected landscapes are often developed right up to their edges and sometimes inside. I imagine the post war financial and economic pressures have just been too great to resist.
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Actually in Salzburg, building new homes as second homes has been stopped by the state in most areas. New hotel or holiday apartment builds are also subject to very strict regulations and generally now only allowed in cases of replacement/renovation for existing buildings. Perhaps other states haven't quite got to this point yet, but I expect it will happen. Of course it's of little interest to British buyers anyway as it's very difficult for non-resident non-EU citizens to buy property in Austria.
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 After all it is free Go on u know u want to!
After all it is free Go on u know u want to!
@queenie pretty please, Having bought two in the last six months I beg to differ. Although one of those was a "Prime Residence".
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My understanding was that in Austria as a foreigner it is difficult to get a mortgage. Although I accept many luxury properties are cash purchases.
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@RedandWhiteFlachau, prime residence no problem at all. But second homes are less easy now. More seem to be "Ferienwohnung" with the understanding that they are occupied for a certain portion of the year. Plus I expect you already have a relationship with your Gemeinde as a property owner and provider of holiday rental accommodation so permission for you is probably just a formality. A new application for second home ownership for an unknown non-EU non-resident isn't likely to get very far.
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One issue is ruining the landscape, the other issue is the towns/villages turning into ghost towns (esp in the summer).
The same thing was happening in Derbyshire 30 years ago when I rented something there. Rich people were buying second homes (mainly people from "down south") but not spending much time in them. The prices of the more atractive (3 bed plus) homes rose sharply. Locals in the village couldn't afford to buy the better homes and so sometimes more than one generation of the family were living together in a two up two down terrace. The young eventually moved away leaving the older members of the community living in the poorer/smaller buildings of a ghost town. Although it has to be said that in the alps many of the ski villages would have been no more than a few farmers had it not been for the skiing.

Interesting that one of the companies in the video was Dutch (the one with the very posh buy to rent apartments valued at around 1 Million € each).
The mayors & ex mayors who were allowing the private comapnies to build large developments for buy to rent schemes (which they made money from by selling their own private land) but then not allowing the locals to build more homes for their own children was a bit naughty.
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
@LittleBullet, I know three people who have purchased 2nd homes/holiday homes in Europe (2 in Tyrol) who didn't need to arrange mortgages, purely an investment. Houses are used max 8 weeks a year. Reall doesn't contribute anything to the local community or economy. Unfortunately, locals in Europe are being screwed over as outside money pushes up the price of homes.
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I dont think it’s difficult to get a mortgage but the LTV levels tend to be low in comparison to the UK. Therefore cash required for the equity.
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 You know it makes sense.
You know it makes sense.
Peter S wrote:
Conservation, perhaps a rare example where the UK has led Europe.

By and large we have done a good job in the UK of protecting our best landscapes from sprawl. Across the alps by comparison landscape scale harm has been caused by 70 years of urbanisation, earth moving and of course the development of ski infrastructure.

Even the alpine national parks and protected landscapes are often developed right up to their edges and sometimes inside. I imagine the post war financial and economic pressures have just been too great to resist.



Deforestation:

UK = 90%
Austria = 50%
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 Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
@Whitegold, Source of those stats?
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 Poster: A snowHead
Poster: A snowHead
MorningGory wrote:
@Whitegold, Source of those stats?


Made up like all the rest
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 Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
@DJL, Obvs Very Happy
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 Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
DJL wrote:
MorningGory wrote:
@Whitegold, Source of those stats?

Made up like all the rest
if he was referring to the Carboniferous period, he might have a point.
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@MorningGory, unfortunately Whitegold's statistic about Austria is broadly correct. 48% of Austria is forested.

Forest area in Austria
Austria has a total land area of 8.4m ha. Approximately 4.0 m ha is forested land (47.6 per cent).
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@MorningGory, I’m afraid he’s correct about UK as well. England forestry cover in 2007 was 8.6% of land area, UK as a whole was 11.7%, and Scotland was 17.1%. The whole island is substantially deforested, although there have been recent improvements. Afraid I don’t have more recent figures to hand but the Forest Research website will have the answer
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But what did it used to be? Surely deforestation implies a reduction?
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@MorningGory, that’s a difficult question (but an interesting one!). It’s fairly well accepted that Scotland and UK are deforested; without human interference since the last glaciation it is expected to have been nearly all wooded c5,000 years ago apart from the highest areas. Not necessarily uniformly densely covered but a lot more than present. Various reasons why cover has dwindled, partly because of felling for early industry and farming practices; forest management only became a thing in 19th century and the Forestry Commission was established for national security/ strategic reasons after it was realised during WW1 we risked not having enough timber for pit props in the coal mines.

Chris Smout’s books on the subject are well worth a read if you’re interested.
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 After all it is free Go on u know u want to!
After all it is free Go on u know u want to!
UK is an ecocidal monster.

No trees. All big fauna exterminated. Seas are all but empty.

Pollution and ecocide exported to China factories by smug middleclass green maniacs.

It's a disaster.
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The thread is about development not woodland cover rolling eyes
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@Peter S, yes but they’re very much related - justified thread drift I reckon (and anyway blame WG and MG!)
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