Last week, the construction company Bonstingl from Fürstenfeld went bankrupt. According to experts, the sector has yet to experience a large-scale wave of bankruptcies.
For months, the construction sector in Styria has been regularly sounding the alarm with drastic words and drawing attention to the tense situation in the sector. “If countermeasures are not taken now, we are threatened with an economic tsunami in the autumn,” Hermann Talowski, head of the trade and craft sector at the Styrian Chamber of Commerce, said at a press conference in July.
The market for prefabricated houses completely collapsed
Autumn is already knocking on the door: will the gloomy predictions come true? “We are at the beginning of the tsunami in question, the first effects can already be seen on the edge,” Talowski said. A current example is the bankruptcy of construction company Bonstingl in Fürstenfeld. The main reasons given are the decline in the prefabricated housing sector and housing construction in general.
And this bankruptcy will certainly not be the last in the industry: “We clearly notice the crisis in the construction sector; this will only become really noticeable after a delay of three or four months,” explains Franz Blantz of the Alpine Creditors Association (AKV) in Styria.
WK handed over the list of demands to the head of state
Division Chairman Talowski now sees the need for politicians to at least address the crisis in construction and in the many upstream and downstream areas: “We presented Governor Christopher Drexler with a detailed set of demands during a meeting.”
This includes the reintroduction of earmarking of housing subsidies, the attractiveness and valorization of Styrian home ownership and subsidies for young families, the promotion of the renovation offensive in city centers and the introduction of a state demolition bonus for distressed properties.
Source: Krone
I’m Ben Stock, a journalist and author at Today Times Live. I specialize in economic news and have been working in the news industry for over five years. My experience spans from local journalism to international business reporting. In my career I’ve had the opportunity to interview some of the world’s leading economists and financial experts, giving me an insight into global trends that is unique among journalists.
