Housing: demand is shifting away from the major cities – property sales in small towns have risen by 42 per cent over six years

Buying a home, which has always been one of the most sought-after goals for Italians, is no longer confined solely to large cities and the most dynamic urban centres. Demand is, in fact, becoming increasingly widespread across the country. This trend had already been highlighted by Nomisma’s latest survey of the property market in Italy’s 13 main cities. Now, Confedilizia’s latest report on the revival of small towns delves deeper into the phenomenon, analysing data from the Italian Revenue Agency and supplementing it with figures from Istat on demographic and migration trends. The analysis paints a picture of a country in which the dynamism of the property market no longer concerns only large urban areas and the markets traditionally under scrutiny, but increasingly involves smaller towns and municipalities that are not provincial capitals.

The figures clearly illustrate this shift: between 2019 and 2025, residential property sales in non-county-town municipalities rose by 32.7 per cent, more than double the increase recorded in county towns (+15.5 per cent). By 2025, this trend had become firmly established, with purchases rising by 6.9 per cent in smaller towns, compared with 5.4 per cent in county towns. With the sole exception of 2022, from 2016 onwards, property sales in non-county-town municipalities have risen by more than the national average and, during market slowdowns such as in 2020 and 2023, have seen more modest declines.

Small municipalities stand out in particular, where property sales rose by 42.3 per cent between 2019 and 2025, well above the national average of 27 per cent. This comprises 6,747 municipalities which, in 2025, accounted for 37 per cent of all transactions. In these areas, property sales rose by 9 per cent last year, making this the only category of municipalities to have exceeded the peak recorded in 2022.

Even medium-sized towns are showing stronger growth than larger cities: over the six-year period analysed, property sales rose by 25.5 per cent, compared with 21.9 per cent in larger towns. In Italy’s 13 largest cities, however, the increase stood at just 14.5 per cent. The performance of Milan and Rome was even more modest: between 2019 and 2025, the total number of property sales recorded in the two cities rose by 5.9 per cent. “The turnaround began at the end of the last decade and became established after the Covid pandemic,” explain representatives from Confedilizia. “If we take 2011 as our starting point, by 2018 the change in purchases in non-regional capital cities was still negative (-2.1 per cent), whilst regional capitals were up by 6.2 per cent.” The provinces showing the strongest growth

Among the provinces recording the sharpest rises are L’Aquila (+72.4%), Alessandria (+61.5%), Biella (+61.1%) and Cosenza (+60.3%), areas that are likely to be recovering following a period of sharp market contraction. Growth in the major metropolitan areas, by contrast, was more modest, with Florence (+9.2%), Bologna (+11.7%), Milan (+12%) and Naples (+13.1%). In 2025, too, growth continued to be concentrated in provincial areas and non-capital municipalities, with particularly strong increases in the provinces of Vibo Valentia, Lodi, Grosseto and Imperia, and in the non-capital municipalities of the provinces of Crotone, L’Aquila, Cosenza, Vercelli and Biella.