Housing market observatory: the housing situation in Italy

In Italy there are approximately two houses for every three inhabitants. There are 35.6 million homes in our peninsula. This is the snapshot taken by the Real Estate Market Observatory together with the Central Directorate of Cadastral Services and the Italian Revenue Agency, which in the volume 'Cadastral Statistics 2023' elaborates the most up-to-date cadastral data, as at 31 December 2023. The picture of real estate Italy is easy to compare with the number of inhabitants, almost 59 million, to calculate that in our peninsula there is one house for every 1.6 inhabitants, i.e. more or less two houses for every three people.

But the concentration is highest in the provinces of Aosta, Sondrio and Savona, where there are more than one house each. The provinces with the highest number of dwellings are, as is easy to guess, those of the big cities: Milan, Rome and Turin. 'Il sistema catastale', the annual publication of the Agenzia delle entrate, records 86 million parcels in the land cadastre. Houses make up more than half (54 per cent) of all ordinary and special properties, but they are on the rise. One only has to look at the previous year's data to discover that in 2023 the land register recorded 86,000 more than twelve months earlier. What is growing are above all civil dwellings, low-cost dwellings, cottages and typical dwellings. Needs and types are changing. Thus, stately homes on the one hand and council houses on the other, villas (which, unlike cottages, are located in luxury areas) and rural houses are falling.

Data in hand, it seems that fellow countrymen are used to living in large spaces: the average Italian house is 118 square metres in size and has 5.5 rooms, although the situation varies greatly according to the type of accommodation. And the risk is to make a statistical assessment equal to Trilussa's chicken. The smallest houses, under 100 square metres, are those that are popular, rural and typical of the area. On the other hand, the houses where people have the most space are to be found in the provinces of Aosta, Sondrio, Verbano, Asti and Belluno, and in the central provinces of Rieti, L'Aquila and Isernia, as well as Oristano. In these areas, the per capita living area is over 100 square metres. In Milan and Rome, by contrast, the square metres per inhabitant are less than 60. The report also gives an insight into house owners. Ninety-three per cent of the residential stock is in the hands of individuals, while the rest is made up of communal property or owned by companies, organisations or other entities, which mainly own the most valuable homes. It is from the taxes we pay on our houses, finally, that we derive the largest slice of the cadastral income (49.3%), even though most of the income comes, proportionally, from special purpose properties such as hotels, theatres, hospitals and sports centres. Despite being only 2.5% of all Italian real estate units, these pay out more than a quarter of the total cadastral rent, a good 28.7%.