 Poster: A snowHead
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Hi. Just wandering how many Ex-Pats there are on here from Britain living in Austria.
I want to someday (sooner rather than later) leave Britain. I know Austrialia is the place to be but its a bit too far from home. I still want to be able to jump on a place and see the family without it costing an arm and leg.
My questions are.
1) How do you find the locals / austrian's as people? Do they like British people? are they freindly?
2) How is the property market compared to the british? Is it easy to sell up if you need to? Is there a high demand to buy property?
3) What do you do for a living? Im a builder so i was wandering what the building trade was like over there? Im also training to be a gas fitter. Have you ever had to get the builders / plumbers in? What sort of rates do they charge? For example lets say Central Heating in a 3 bed house. Or what are the call out charges?
4) What kind of tax's and rates do you have to pay? Council tax. VAT. Inheritance tax. Stamp duty. Water / Electric / Gas Rates.
5)Is buying a property complicated? Has anyone ever bought land in Austria and built on it?
Any experiance's you would like to share about living in Austria please tell me.
Ill look forward to your response's thanks..
karl
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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Hi Karl
I've lived in Austria for a few years and it's a wonderful place. I can't answer all of your questions but I'll give you a few tips!
The locals are friendly but it can take a while for them to accept you as a foreigner (especially in the resort towns/villages). My friends are from all over the world though, as us non-locals tend to stick together! Although English is widely spoken and understood, if you do speak German, it's much easier to integrate and to be accepted.
The property market is not as volatile as it is in England. Many Austrians traditionally didn't buy their own homes, and many of the properties in resort areas are being bought by foreigners. If you go outside of the ski areas, it's a different matter however. One and two bedroom apartments in ski areas are high in demand and the prices reflect this; in contrast a family home is cheaper in comparison. Bear in mind that if you sell up within 5 years of purchase, you have to pay a large tax penalty. You have to reckon with about 10% of the purchase price for taxes and charges (stamp duty etc). If you buy from an estate agent, they will also charge a compulsory 3.3% fee (payable both by the vendor and the purchaser!)
I'm a ski instructor, and do various other jobs in the summer. The building trade appears to be fairly OK here (but I'm no expert) but do you speak German? If you don't, it will be very difficult to get work in the building industry.
I'm not an expert on the taxation system either....sorry! We live in an apartment so we pay a service charge which covers all our council tax-type payments (rubbish collection etc). We also pay water and electricity, which aren't too expensive (although like many Austrians, we heat mainly with wood).
Many people in Austria build their own homes, so it's much more normal to do this than in the UK. You'll see just as many plots of land for sale as houses and flats.
Hope this helps a little! It's a wonderful country to live in, I'm not going anywhere!
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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?
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
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Hello Karl Moto,
We moved to Austria september 2007 and live in a ski rersort (Niederau) where we run an apartment house. It is definately the best thing we ever did and the locals have been, without exception, fantastic. Our younger son was 11 and went into the local school and is fluent in both German and dialect now even though most of the locals speak good English. They teach it from a very young age here and all his friends are quite capable of having a conversation with me!
Property we found is quite a bit cheaper - we bought our apartment house which is 4 floors, acommodation for 40 plus cellar, garage, kitchen lounge etc and a half acre garden for less than we got for our 4 bedroom house in Berkshire!!
I would reccomend the linguaphone German course, we found it very helpful.
I wish you all the best and very good luck but mainly - DO IT SOON!!
Carolyn
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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mate go to saalbach go and see wolfgang in bobbies pub he is half english and there are a few english there too ask him all the questions you need maybe get to know him first buy going there in the winter and buy him a beer and talk to him,
worth a try and you get a snow trip in good snow at the same time it is good all year as you get walkers and mountain bikers in the summer  i know i've been there for all the season and summer
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You'll need to Register first of course.
You'll need to Register first of course.
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I'm in Germany just now but I have bought a plot in Austria and will be building on it this year. My experience is that building new is considerably more expensive than buying, say, a 10-15 year old house  . There's no particular problem in buying/building (for EU citizens), though you do have the extra costs mentioned by nice, if you don't stay five years.
I'm retired, at least, theoretically. I was/am a programmer. Since my savings have shrunk with the death of the pound and I am committed to this house-building lark, I am looking for work again. Any offers? 
The locals are, in general, very friendly (though obviously speaking the language helps).
As I understand it, Inheritance Tax (=Erbschaftssteuer) was abolished in Austria last year. VAT (=Mehrwertsteuer) is 20% - come over here, Gordon
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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espri, whereabouts in Bavaria are you based? What line of software were / are you into?
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Steilhang, Why ask about software, got some very well paid .Net development on offer? Need the excuse to give up my contract here in UK and go use my apartment in Schladming more.
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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| Steilhang wrote: |
| espri, whereabouts in Bavaria are you based? What line of software were / are you into? |
I live in Chiemgau, not far from the Chiemsee.
Since I came to Germany in 1977 I worked almost continuously (for most of the time freelance) for Siemens (in its various computing incarnations). Initially I did system software development for BS2000 (Siemens mainframe OS), mostly in assembler. For the past 9 years or so I was involved in software testing in a UNIX environment, including writing scripts, etc. General experience in other languages, Algol, POP-2, C, C++, etc., off and on over the years. My strategic plan at present was to install Visual Studio from my MSDN subscription, to get myself up to pace in that area - but somehow just now the ski pistes keep getting in the way
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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waynos, no, sorry! Looking for guys with experience in protocol stack software for UMTS (femto)base stations. Very real time, embedded, grungy stuff. All in C.
espri, Chiemgau, nice! Why would you want to move to Austria from there? Like I said to waynos we're looking for some pretty specific skills in 3GPP. Just thought I'd ask on the off chance!
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You know it makes sense.
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Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
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