Housing: Istat reports a 1% rise in prices in the first quarter, up 5.2% year-on-year

House prices continued to rise in the first quarter of 2026. According to Istat, the house price index – covering homes purchased by households for their own use or as an investment – rose by 1% in the first three months of the year compared with the previous quarter and by 5.2% compared with the same period in 2025 (it had risen by 4% in the fourth quarter of 2025).

The year-on-year growth – explains the institute – is attributable both to the prices of new homes (which rose by 6.7 per cent, a sharp acceleration compared with the -1.1% recorded in the previous quarter) and to prices of existing homes (which rose by 4.8%, a slight slowdown from the +5% recorded in the fourth quarter of 2025).

Prices are rising against a backdrop of overall growth in sales volumes as well: a year-on-year increase of +4.4% was recorded in the first quarter of 2026 by the Revenue Agency’s Property Market Observatory for the residential sector (up from +0.4% in the previous quarter).
On a quarter-on-quarter basis, the rise in the index (+1%) is attributable – as highlighted by Istat – solely to the increase in prices of existing homes (+1.5%), whilst prices of new homes are down sharply (-1.5% compared with the final quarter of 2025).

The IPAB’s (House Price Index) realised inflation rate for 2026 stands at +2.6% (+1.8% for new homes and +2.7% for existing homes). Using data from the first quarter of 2026, Istat has also updated the weights used to calculate the price indices for new and existing homes. In particular, the weighting for new homes has fallen to 13.09% (down from 17.60% in 2025), whilst that for existing homes stands at 86.91% (up from 82.40% last year).