Karl Theodor von Inama-Sternegg · 1888
Inama-Sternegg’s statistical article compares Austrian real-estate transaction prices with fiscal valuations in 1886 and relates the results to an inquiry from 1866. Its central distinction is between income value, market value, and administratively calculated tax value. Their divergence illuminates property markets and fiscal institutions, but also limits the use of sale prices to estimate national wealth.
The opening asks how land’s productive contribution can be separated from returns to capital, management, and entrepreneurial activity. Lease payments are inadequate because they reflect buildings, equipment, contractual obligations, and bargaining conditions as well as land itself. The methodological alternative begins with net yield:
Die Feststellung des Reinertrages der Grundstücke kann selbst wieder in zweifacher Weise erfolgen: durch directe Erhebung oder durch Einschätzung.
English translation: The determination of the net yield of the plots of land may itself in turn be effected in two ways: by direct survey or by assessment.
Inama-Sternegg favors cadastral assessment for estimating land’s distinct contribution to production. Its abstraction from individual management limits its usefulness for valuing particular parcels, yet makes it relevant to national-economic accounting. Capitalizing actual agricultural profits would risk assigning entrepreneurial returns to the soil. Buildings require a different approach, since their use produces income more directly and assessed rental income provides a more suitable basis. Such calculations serve an empirical understanding of production:
Sie schaffen eine Klarheit über die relative Wichtigkeit der einzelnen Factoren des volkswirtschaftlichen Productionsprocesses, wie sie durch keine aprioristische Erkenntnisse zu gewinnen ist.
English translation: They create a clarity concerning the relative importance of the individual factors of the economic process of production such as is to be obtained by no a priori knowledge.
Market value nevertheless warrants independent investigation. Purchase prices express not only expected profitability but also the social and economic attractions of ownership. Their relationship to fiscal values matters for mortgage lending, taxation, purchase decisions, and social policy. Yet the evidence is less comprehensive than the tax records:
Für die Gewinnung eines generellen Ausdruckes für den Verkehrswert der Liegenschaften steht nun allerdings eine so breite und erschöpfende Grundlage, wie sie die Kataster der Grund- und Gebäudesteuer für den Ertragswert bilden, nicht zu Gebote.
English translation: For obtaining a general expression for the market value of real property, however, so broad and exhaustive a basis as the cadastres of the land tax and the building tax provide for the yield value is not at our disposal.
The 1886 inquiry draws on 25,959 usable transactions from January and February, covering the crownlands except Tyrol and Vorarlberg. Compared with 1866, geographical coverage expands and forced auctions become separately identifiable, but the observation period contracts and information about property types becomes less precise. Tax categories consequently substitute for direct classifications of land use.
The aggregate ratio of sale price to tax value falls from 2.33 in 1866 to 2.25 in 1886. This apparent convergence conceals opposing movements. Within the territories covered by both inquiries, the ratio for properties paying land tax alone rises from 2.72 to 3.45, whereas that for other properties declines from 2.25 to 1.94. Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia exhibit marked differences. These figures cannot be read simply as changes in property prices: revised assessments, wartime conditions in 1866, and the inclusion of Vienna and Prague complicate comparison.
The findings also expose differences within fiscal valuation. Buildings assessed through rental income stand closer to market prices than those subject to house-class taxation, while agricultural land displays especially large discrepancies. Inama-Sternegg criticizes the statutory capitalization formula for implying an excessively high return. He proposes calculating capital value from cadastral net yield at a lower interest rate, with a ceiling of three percent, and recommends revising the house-class tax cadastre.
Property size and mode of sale further qualify the results. Lower-value properties generally command higher multiples of tax value, possibly because more buyers can compete for them and adjoining owners find small parcels particularly useful. Forced auctions may depress prices through compulsion, but competitive bidding can counteract that effect. Although auction ratios are lower in most crownlands, their aggregate nearly equals the ratio for voluntary sales. Differences in property size and building content prevent a simple explanation in terms of distress.
The conclusion places firm limits on inference. Numerous transactions do not necessarily represent the entire property stock; inadequate population comparisons, inconsistent size classifications, and heterogeneous circumstances obstruct causal interpretation. Inama-Sternegg therefore rejects extrapolating a total national real-estate value from the observed ratios. The article combines fiscal criticism with statistical restraint: market prices and administrative assessments illuminate one another without becoming interchangeable measures of wealth.
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