The Agenzia delle Entrate (Revenue Agency) publishes the 2023 edition of the Omi Mortgage Report, which contains statistics on the number of mortgaged properties and the capital financed in 2022. Some 443,000 mortgage deeds were registered last year, for almost 1 million properties securing almost 102 billion euro of debt capital. The report also shows that, of the total capital financed in 2022, more than 25 billion, or about 25%, comes from deeds in which the real estate units granted as credit guarantee are located in Italy's eight largest cities.
Mortgage loans in Italy
According to the Omi report, the debt capital extracted from real estate assets in 2022 will be close to €102 billion, or 5.3% of Italian GDP. The amount of this capital financing the housing market with certainty (typically the purchase of a house financed by a mortgage loan taken out with the purchased house itself as collateral) is about €48 billion. Approximately €36 billion, on the other hand, is used to finance other economic activities: in this case, the potential value of real estate assets is transformed into a value that enters the active economic circuit. The remainder, approximately €18 billion, has a mixed destination.
Approximately 443,000 mortgage deeds were signed and registered in 2022, for a total of 975,937 mortgaged real estate units (-4.0% compared to 2021) and 101.6 billion debt capital financed (+0.2% compared to 2021) against the mortgage guarantee.
A large proportion, 68% of the mortgaged real estate units, are residential deeds, where the properties are dwellings and outbuildings, in which the capital financed in 2022, net of subrogation, amounts to almost €50 billion, about 49% of the total. The remainder, €52 billion, relates to deeds of mortgage, as security for financing, on properties of other types than residential (tertiary-commercial, productive, etc.).
Mortgages in Italy by geographical area
Analyses of mortgage data by geographical area revealed a high concentration in the North both in terms of mortgaged properties, 60% of the national total, and in terms of financed capital, 57% of the total. In all areas the number of mortgaged properties is decreasing, while debt capital increases in 2022 compared to 2021 in the North (+11%) and in the South (+5%) and decreases in the Centre (-13%).
The North and the South are also the geographical areas with the highest growth, respectively +28% and +33% compared to 2021, of debt capital guaranteed with the value of real estate not re-entering the real estate market but used to finance other economic activities. In the Centre, on the other hand, capital with this destination decreases by about 25%.
Mortgages in major Italian cities
Italy's eight largest cities by population are home to almost 125,000 mortgaged properties in 2022, corresponding to more than €25 billion, about a quarter of the total capital financed nationwide, up 4.4% from 2021, but with only Milan, Bologna and Genoa, among the eight cities, realising a positive annual change.
As also noted in previous years and in line with the national figure, in large cities about 50% of the capital financed with real estate collateral returns to the real estate market. In Palermo and Naples, the capital reinjected into the real estate market reaches more than 80% of the total. By contrast, in Milan almost half of the debt capital finances other economic activities.
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