In the first half of 2020, those who bought property in Milan brought with them different cultures and geographical origins, as foreign buyers continued to invest in Italy. This is according to the Tecnocasa Research Office which has released data showing where buyers in the Lombard capital come from. In spite of continued interest from foreigners in buying a house in Milan, percentages have dropped and Milan's real estate market has become less international during COVID-19.
According to Tecnocasa's network of agencies, in the first half of 2020, 92% of people who bought a home in Milan had Italian citizenship, while in the remaining 8% of cases, buyers were foreigners, both EU and non-EU. In spite of continued internation investment interest in Milan, this is a lower percentage compared to previous years: taking a closer look at the data, this figure has gone from 11% in 2018 to 8.9% in 2019, and as we have seen, it has dropped to 8% in 2020, something which has probably been caused largely by the COVID-19 health emergency. As well as Milan, foreign buyers are also interested in a wide range of areas throughout Italy: find out which areas are most popular with British buyers in Italy.
As for Italian buyers, 82.7% of those who buy in Milan are already residents of the city, 5.2% come from the province of Milan and 12.1% come from other provinces and regions in Italy. These percentages are very similar to those recorded in 2019, with a slight increase in the percentage of those coming from other Italian provinces, from 10.9% to the current 12.1%. It can also be concluded that among the buyers that are not from the city of Milan, 30% of them come from the province of Milan and 20% from other provinces iin Lombardy, while 50% of buyers in this category are people from other Italian regions.
The analysis of the Tecnocasa Group Research Department then focuses on the reason why people from outside Milan have decided to buy property in the city, both in the case of Italian and foreign buyers. In 2020, a third of these sales were said to be for investment purposes, while in 66.7% of cases, deals closed were by those buying a main residence. Looking at the equivalent data from 2019, the consequences of the coronavirus pandemic are clear where less people are choosing to live in the city: in 2019 the percentage of main residence purchases by buyers arriving from outside Milan was higher and reached 74.6%.
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