When you rent you usually do it via a Makler (real estate agent), who is going to ask for 2 months of rent as his/her fee. This is not the deposit, which is usu

When you rent you usually do it via a Makler (real estate agent), who is going to ask for 2 months of rent as his/her fee. This is not the deposit, which is usually 3 months, and not the first month rent, this money is gone forever. So people tend to rent on the longer term, 5-10 years easily, because you have to have about 6 months of rent in cash available just to start. Which sucks if you find a job somewhere else, or just choose badly and it turns out the neighbours are loud, or the house is a sh*tty concrete building with paper walls built in the 50s... If you are very lucky or have connections, you can rent privately, and then you don't have to pay the Makler. But the number of apartments available like this is very low, I'd say <10%. I moved here from the UK, and while the UK (especially London) has its problems, I would choose that system _any time_ over what's here in Vienna. To add insult to injury, the housing prices are sky-high, almost as bad as in London, while the salaries are much lower. So buying an apartment is not really an option unless you can sell another one, or get some support from family. On the other hand, my wife lost her job, and for the first 5 months or so she gets more than 50% of her salary as Arbeitslosengeld. So that offsets the extremely high taxes a bit.