Municipalities, 60% are profitable in property management but lack strategic vision

Rather than building the new, the challenge of the next decade will be to rehabilitate the existing. After years, the housing emergency has returned disruptively to the tables of national and European politics, bringing to light extremely critical levels of accessibility to housing - both on the buying and selling front and on the rental front. While in Italia the first phase of the Housing Plan continues to be delayed, last week the European Parliament adopted its first report on the housing crisis, asking the EU Commission and national governments for a series of initiatives to help tackle rising prices and the housing shortage, supporting not only construction but also renovation, with specific funds. In the era of urban regeneration and zero land consumption, the management of public real estate therefore becomes a strategic lever to respond to the housing crisis. In this field, municipalities are called to a double task: the accountability (the duty to account for assets) and the active economic management of facilities. But how are Italian cities responding to this call?

On the real estate reporting front, the path of Italian local administrations still appears to be half way. While 49% of municipalities present an average level of documentation and 24% achieve good quality standards, a substantial critical front remains: 17% of administrations offer poor reporting and 10% a total absence of final data. Yet the breadth of the intermediate range suggests that the gap can be bridged without radical organisational changes. These are entities that have already introduced basic tools and procedures and that could, through targeted strengthening and greater management discipline, make a decisive qualitative leap towards full transparency.

The data emerges from the latest report of the Centre for Research on Public Entities (Rep), which analysed the public real estate assets of the capital municipalities between 2024 and 2025. The study measured the performance of municipalities by analysing two key parameters: the quality and completeness of published information (reporting) and economic efficiency (management), understood as the balance between rents receivable and payable in relation to the resident population. Paola Caporossi, co-founder of the Centre, emphasises how mapping is the essential condition for any valorisation strategy: "Real estate must be utilised, but to do this it is first necessary to take a census. Without a precise knowledge of what exists, any use plan is doomed to failure. Only in this way can disused public real estate be the subject of a redevelopment plan, to be used for student halls of residence and for affordable housing'. According to the expert, today's challenge is no longer about mere bureaucratic compliance, but how it is done. Although more than 70 per cent of municipalities have embarked on a path of transparency by going beyond the mere publication of cadastral data, the quality of information useful for strategic planning remains extremely heterogeneous.

The transparency map indeed draws a varied Italia. Against a national average of efficiency in reporting set at 52 points out of 100, a core group of cities is well above the threshold, with excellences ranging from Catania and Aosta to Caltanissetta, Lucca and Prato. Encouraging performances also in Andria, Campobasso and Catanzaro. Among the metropolises, Rome and Bologna exceed the national average, while Palermo, Naples, Florence and Genoa are just below. On the contrary, the publication of information still appears lacking in Padua and in smaller centres such as Latina, Chieti, Bolzano or Grosseto. The data on economic management are positive: more than 60% of administrations manage to close the balance between rents receivable and payable in the positive.

While the national average stops at around 5 euro per inhabitant, realities such as Milan and Florence stand out for their ability to generate value, with peaks of 93 and 60 euro per capita respectively. A virtuous trend that also involves Pavia, Viterbo, Venice, Turin and Siena, all above the 30 euro threshold, followed by the good results of Lodi, Cagliari and Vicenza. For many other capitals, assets are a net cost. The most marked deficits hit Isernia (-22 euro), Vibo Valentia (-21 euro) and Rome (-18 euro), but the minus sign also weighed on the budgets of Palermo and Genoa, as well as centres such as Bergamo, Perugia and Parma where the weight of rent liabilities remains an unresolved criticality. The case of the capital, while standing out in the negative, should be contextualised in the light of the immense assets that are difficult to manage.