ABA - Invest in Austria - Commercial Property
Overall Summary
Vienna is rated as one of the cheapest European locations in an international comparison, carried out by commercial real estate services provider CB Richard Ellis, of 175 cities worldwide. The city of Vienna has cheaper office rental costs than Prague, Amsterdam, Warsaw, Brussels, Rome, Frankfurt, Zurich, Berlin and Budapest.
Low rents for office spaces around the provincial capitals are also expected by businesses in Austria, with monthly rents ranging from just €7.60 to €11.40 per square metre. Vienna has slightly higher monthly rents of around €20.00 per square metre. Prices vary depending on what province the premises are.
Headquarters / Regional Office
Around 1,000 foreign companies have their headquarters in Austria and 300 of those use Austria as a base to carry out cross-border corporate activities. 84 regional corporate headquarters are among the top 500 companies in Austria in terms of revenue. These include companies such as BMW, C&A, Canon, Eli Lilly, Heineken, JVC International, Panasonic, Siemens, Volvo and Western Union.
Austria’s strengths include its cultural and geographical proximity to Central and Eastern Europe, excellent infrastructure, favourable tax provisions, qualified employees and stability of the country, meaning that more companies choose to have their headquarters located in the area.
Research & Development, Innovation, Science Parks
Competence Centres for Excellent Technologies (COMET), a nationwide funding initiative launched in 2007, aims to strengthen the cooperation between companies and the scientific community. This initiative is used by Austria to link science and industry not only in the country but throughout the rest of the world too.
Five COMET centres have been established in the field of life sciences and are well-known establishments that act as interfaces for research and industry. Oncotyrol, the Austrian Centre for Medical Innovation and Technology (ACMIT), the Research Centre Pharmaceutical Engineering (RCPE) and the Austrian Centre of Industrial Biotechnology are also internationally esteemed centres for R&D.
It is much more cost-effective for companies to work with universities in the area for R&D. This partnership not only opens up the possibility of increasing the innovative strength of the company, but also creates new opportunities and benefits for the university as well.
