Ten years, 100,000 euros: gold, stock ETFs, oil, and why Vienna concrete gold plays a different game

The short version

100,000 euros became, over ten years: Vienna flat 165,000 euros (excluding rent), Euro Stoxx 50 215,000, DAX 249,000, ATX 276,000, world ETF 277,000, a mixed portfolio of world ETF, Euro Stoxx and gold 279,000, S&P 500 340,000, gold 344,000 euros.
Risk: the worst twelve months cost Austrian residential property 3 percent, the mixed portfolio 6, the world ETF 15, the Euro Stoxx 18, the ATX 35 percent. Whoever entered in November 2021 had 96,000 euros a year later with the world ETF and 88,000 with the Euro Stoxx; the Vienna flat was worth 17 percent more.
A flat pays rent and gets lived in. With three percent net rent, the Vienna figure rises from 165,000 to about 220,000 euros.
The decisive difference: a bank lends 70 percent for a flat and nothing for an ETF. 50,000 euros of equity in a let Vienna flat notionally became 170,000 euros; the same 50,000 in the world ETF 139,000, in the mixed portfolio 139,000, in gold 172,000 euros, at a third of the ETF's volatility.
Where and what you bought decided more than whether: asking prices rose between 28 percent (Josefstadt) and 92 percent (Hietzing) by district, 59 percent on average. A real case from Floridsdorf, one of the slowest districts, still beat the market twofold because it was bought cheaply.

New building with a planted facade and balconies on a street corner in a young Viennese quarter — The concrete gold of the decade: a new building with a planted facade in one of Vienna's young quarters. Photo: Wohni Journal

The chart: ten years on one scale

The lines show what 100,000 euros would have become, month by month, in euros. Deliberately, only assets a normal household could have held without prophecy are compared: gold, oil, the big stock indices and a broadly diversified world ETF, plus a mixed portfolio of world ETF, Euro Stoxx 50 and gold in equal thirds. Single stocks such as Nvidia or cryptocurrencies are left out on purpose: their ten-year gains are events, not an investment strategy, and hardly anyone would have sat through their crashes of 50 to 75 percent. The scale is logarithmic, equal slope means equal percentage return; every legend entry can be switched on and off.

Price performance in euros, excluding dividends, rents, taxes and costs. US assets converted at monthly EUR/USD rates; world and emerging-markets ETFs are the iShares funds URTH and EEM. Vienna: registered purchase prices per square metre (RE/MAX ImmoSpiegel, annual; 2026 estimated with the OeNB annual rate). As of 21 August 2026.

Two things stand out immediately. First: gold and the American stock market sit almost level at the top, at around 13 percent a year, a fifth of which the S&P 500 owes to the stronger dollar. The world ETF, the mixed portfolio and the ATX follow at just under 11 percent, Europe's Euro Stoxx 50 clearly behind at 8 percent. Second: the Vienna flat returned the least on price, 5 percent a year, but it is the only line in the chart that looks like a ruler.

The buyer of 2021

The fair test for any asset is not the best entry point but a bad one. In November 2021 the stock markets stood at records, and so did Vienna's housing market. A year later, whoever had put 100,000 euros into the world ETF had 96,000 euros left, into the Euro Stoxx 50 88,000, into the mixed portfolio 97,000, into gold 108,000 euros. The Vienna flat was worth 17 percent more in the same year, and even in the downturn of 2023 and 2024 it lost only five percent. The stock markets have recovered since, but only those who sat through the setback were there for it, and that is exactly the question no return table answers.

How flat concrete gold really is

The second chart measures exactly that: for every asset, the worst twelve-month period since 2016 and the share of all twelve-month windows that ended in a loss. Austrian residential property lost three percent in its worst year; the largest decline from a peak was five percent. The mixed portfolio, the most defensive securities solution in the comparison, came to minus six, the world ETF to minus fifteen, the ATX to minus 35, oil to minus 58 percent.

Residential property based on the OeNB/TU Wien index for Austria (quarterly), all other assets monthly. Losing periods: share of all twelve-month windows since August 2016 with a negative result.

This flatness is no accident but the nature of the thing. A flat is not traded by algorithms in milliseconds but by households that want to live in it. Its price follows incomes, interest rates and population, all slow-moving quantities. It therefore cannot be panic-sold, which has saved most investors from their worst decision in the crisis years.

Essential, not speculative

Gold pays no interest, oil no dividend. A flat pays rent or saves it. In Vienna an existing flat yields, net of service charges, reserves and small repairs, on the order of three percent of its value a year. Reinvested over ten years, that lifts the Vienna figure from 165,000 to about 220,000 euros, the level of the Euro Stoxx 50, and the rent rose with inflation over that time. And unlike any other asset in this comparison, the flat meets a basic need: whoever lives in it pays the rent to themselves, in a city that grows by a small town every year.

The lever only concrete gold gets

Now to the calculation that appears in no price table. For a flat, a bank advances 70 to 80 percent of the purchase price, at interest rates that were below two percent for most of these ten years. For an ETF, gold or oil, a normal household gets no such loan. That changes the comparison fundamentally, because suddenly it is not 100,000 euros at work but 150,000, of which you own only 50,000.

The worked example: August 2016, a Vienna flat for 150,000 euros, about 44 square metres at the registered price of the time, 15,000 euros of purchase costs, 50,000 euros of equity, a 115,000-euro loan over 25 years at 2.5 percent, instalment 516 euros a month. The flat is let; the net rent roughly covers the instalment, and we conservatively assume zero surplus. What grows is the equity value: the flat's value minus the remaining debt.

Equity value = flat value (Vienna registered prices) minus remaining debt (25-year annuity, 2.5 percent). Comparison lines: 50,000 euros in the world ETF, the mixed portfolio and gold, each in euros, without dividends. Purchase costs are deducted in the starting value; taxes, maintenance and vacancy are missing.

The result: 50,000 euros of equity in the let flat notionally became 170,000 euros. The same 50,000 euros in the world ETF returned 139,000, in the mixed portfolio 139,000, in gold 172,000, in the S&P 500 170,000 euros. The levered flat thus beat the broadly diversified stock market and kept pace with gold, with one difference: it never lost more than five percent along the way, the world ETF 19, and it provided a home on the side.

The bank lends 70 percent for the flat and not a cent for the ETF. That is the whole difference.

A real case from our newsroom

Because model calculations are patient, a real case, disclosed in our own interest: a flat of 39 square metres in the 21st district. The previous owner bought it in 2015 for 80,000 euros and sold it in 2021 for 150,000 euros, a gain of 88 percent in six years. The 2021 buyer put in 10,000 euros of equity and financed the rest. Today the value stands at around 210,000 euros. After five years of repayment the remaining debt is roughly 130,000 euros, so the equity is about 80,000 euros, eight times the stake, with the rent having carried the instalment. Whoever had put the same 10,000 euros into the world ETF in November 2021 would own about 15,400 euros today.

This case beat the market clearly: plus 88 percent from 2015 to 2021, while Vienna registered prices rose 37 percent. That does not contradict the chart; it explains it. First, the flat was bought cheaply: 80,000 euros for 39 square metres is about 2,050 euros per square metre, in a district whose listings averaged a good 4,500 euros at the time. Today, at around 5,400 euros per square metre, it sits roughly where used flats in the district trade; a large part of the gain is the closing of that discount. Second, it is small, and small flats are pricier per square metre and more sought after. Third, it lies in a district catching up with the Vienna average. Bought cheaply, small, catch-up district: those are exactly the three levers the price check and the investment ranking measure.

Where and what you bought decided more than whether

How wide the spread within one city is shows in the asking prices per district from the same private source, ten years apart: immopreise.at and derStandard evaluated 18,664 listings in August 2016 and 17,030 in May 2026. Hietzing, Hernals, Margareten and Leopoldstadt rose by 86 to 92 percent, Josefstadt, the laggard, by 28 percent, Floridsdorf by 39 percent. The average across all districts was 59 percent, close to the land-registry line of the first chart. Three independent methods, private listings, private land-registry extraction and the central bank's index, thus land within a few percentage points of each other.

Average asking prices for owner-occupied flats per district in euros per square metre, August 2016 versus May 2026, immopreise.at/derStandard. Asking prices run about nine percent above eventual sale prices; the rates of change are largely unaffected. Highlighted: Floridsdorf, the district of the real case.

The lesson is uncomfortable for any blanket statement, including the first chart's: whoever bought in Hietzing or Hernals in 2016 nearly doubled; whoever bought in Josefstadt or Floridsdorf at list price got a third. The spread between districts was larger than the difference between a flat and the world ETF. With concrete gold, selection decides the return, not the asset class.

What the calculation leaves out

Leverage cuts both ways: in the 2022 to 2024 downturn, Austrian residential property lost five percent; for a buyer with 30 percent equity that was 17 percent of their stake. Variable-rate loans doubled in cost within a year in 2022; whoever could not cover the instalment from rent was under pressure. Purchase costs of around ten percent, maintenance, vacancy, the 30 percent property gains tax on sale, and the fact that a flat cannot be turned into cash in an afternoon are missing from every chart. For stocks the dividends are missing, for gold the storage costs. And a single property is a concentration risk: the one district, the one building, the one tenant. These footnotes shift the gaps, not the findings.

What remains

Three things survive every caveat. Gold and broadly diversified stocks returned more in ten years than a flat without a loan. The flat was the only asset that never had a bad year, paid rent and could be lived in. And it was the only one that could be levered with the bank's money above the return of the world ETF without taking on its swings. Which mix is right is decided by time horizon, nerves and access to credit, not by this table. To run your own numbers: the investment-flat calculator computes the lever with a loan year by year, the future calculator buying against waiting.

Sources

Context: A look back based on public price data and a model example, not a forecast. Past performance says nothing about future results. The newsroom case is a single instance. No investment, tax or legal advice.