The prices of second-hand houses continued to decline in Italy during the month of February 2018, with a decrease of 0.3%, which puts the average price at 1,806 euro/m2 (100 euro/sq ft). If we look at the figures for February 2017 (1,888 euro/m2 or 175 euro/sq ft), the year-on-year decrease was 4.4 percentage points, according to the idealista real estate market.
Regions
Most of the regions have seen reductions, with the most significant falls in Valle d'Aosta (-2.9%), Emilia-Romagna (-1.4%) and Sicily (-1.2%). Compared with January, prices have not changed in Apulia, Calabria and Trentino-Alto Adige. Lazio and Campania, both with an increase of 0.7%, are the regions where the owners' expectations for their house prices have grown the most, together with Tuscany (0.3%) and Friuli-Venezia Giulia (0.2%).
Liguria is confirmed as the most expensive region in Italy for housing prices, with an average of 2,597 euro per square metre, or 241 euro per square foot, followed by Lazio (2,395 euro/m2 or 222 euro/sq ft) and Trentino-Alto Adige with (2,373 euro/m2 or 220 euro/sq ft). In the lower part of the ranking we find Calabria with 898 euro per square metre, or 83 euro/sq ft, Molise (1,005 euro/m2 or 93 euro/sq ft) and Sicily (1,125 euro/m2 or 104 euro/sq ft).
Provinces
The situation in the provinces shows that there were negative changes in 63 of the 106 monitored areas. The largest falls in February were in Pavia (-6%), followed by Lecco (-5.7%) and Rimini (-5.2%). The biggest increases were recorded in Cremona (7.3%), Gorizia (5.2%) and Catanzaro (3.7%).
The ranking of the most expensive provinces is topped by Savona, with 3,377 euro/m2 or 313 euro/sq ft, followed by Bolzano (3,164 euro/m2 or 294 euro/sq ft) and Imperia (2,698 euro/m2 or 250 euro/sq ft). In the lower part of the ranking we find 17 areas with values that don’t even exceed one thousand euro per square meter or 92 euro per square foot, such as Taranto (988 euro/m2 or 91 euro/sq ft) and Biella (643 euro/m2 or 60 euro/sq ft).
Cities
The downward trend also dominates in the cities, with 58 centres in negative numbers as opposed to 48 in positive numbers in February. In the smaller provincial capitals, we find changes in the two extremes – in some cities, a decrease in prices is evident, such as in Vercelli (-7.9%), Barletta (-4.7%), Teramo and Ragusa, both with a decline of 4.1%. On the other hand, there were increases in Catanzaro (7.2%), Campobasso (5.7%) and Belluno (5.4%). In the largest cities, progress is being made towards a gradual recovery of house prices such as in Milan (2.7%), Turin (1.9%) and Florence (0.6%). Prices are almost stable in Rome (-0.1%) and in Naples there has been a 1.5% drop.
In the list of prices, Venice (4,367 euro/m2 or 405 euro/sq ft) is the most expensive city, followed by Florence (3,478 euro/m2 or 323 euro/sq ft) and Bolzano (3,434 euro/m2 or 319 euro/sq ft). The cheapest places in idealista’s ranking are Biella, with 722 euro per square meter or 67 euro per square foot, followed by Caltanissetta (740 euro/m2 or 68 euro/sq ft) and Agrigento (825 euro/m2 or 76 euro/sq ft).
The idealista property price index
idealista is currently one of the most used property websites in Italy for buying, selling and renting by both individuals and professionals. With a database of over a million properties, the research department at idealista has been analysing real estate prices in Italy since 2007.
To put together this property price index, idealista has analysed 362,599 real estate listings published on the idealista website in February 2018, with properties that have passed a quality control based on such information as price, size, distribution and not having been uploaded twice to the website.
To all for a sufficient standardisation of the results, only municipalities which maintained a constant average of 50 or more second-hand properties published for sale during the study period. Municipalities which didn’t meet this average were excluded from the sample group, as were those which had a variation of more than 30% in the number of listings during the study period.
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