Real estate services towards consolidation: +3.6% turnover in 2024

 On the employment side, as far as real estate services alone are concerned, Italy has more than 350 thousand total employees and 230 thousand companies. Direct employees - i.e. the company's internal resources - are few compared to the total number: 34.1%, just under 120,000, reflecting a market that tends to make greater use of external collaborators; so much so that the percentage of direct employees out of the total workforce (0.3%) continues to be lower than the European average, just as the average size of companies is still very low, at 0.5 employees per company.

In Italy, in fact, the percentage of added value attributable to the work of small enterprises operating in real estate services is 93.6 per cent, compared to 5.5 per cent for medium-sized enterprises and 0.9 per cent for large ones.

Spain also has a market predominantly composed of small (and micro) enterprises, with 88% of gross value added coming from real estate services industries with less than 50 employees. The number of companies operating in the sector is also similar to Italy: 230,700. But the proportion of domestic employees is significantly higher, at 64.8 per cent, with 0.7 per cent of the total workforce. Turnover 2024 stands at almost 50 billion, and forecasts for growth in turnover in real estate services for 2025 reach 8.6 per cent, the highest estimate of any country.

Moving on to Germany, in 2023 the weight of added value from medium-sized companies (50-249 employees) remained stable at 13.5 per cent, while that of large companies rose to more than 16 per cent, realigning with the levels and growth dynamics observed between 2014 and 2019. The 2024 turnover is the highest among the countries included in the analysis: EUR 152 billion, with an estimated slight decrease (-1.1) by the end of 2025.

On the other hand, large companies (over 250 employees) continue to characterise the markets of the United Kingdom and France, with shares of over 45 and 40 per cent respectively. Here, the 2024 turnovers reached EUR 94.4 billion and EUR 101 billion respectively, with estimated growth to the end of 2025 of 5.4 and 0.9 per cent.

Detailing the segments of real estate services, the property management companies participating in the Scenari Immobiliari working group recorded a total turnover of close to EUR 310 million in 2024, up 5.1% year-on-year, with over 1,580 total employees. The sector retains the leading weight in workforce distribution, despite the reduction of facility management activities in favour of asset management, due diligence and project management.

The integrated engineering and architectural design exceeds a turnover of 145 million euro in 2024, with a total of around 1,400 employees. Core activities are carried out almost entirely in-house, while specialised services such as structural and plant engineering, mobility planning and sustainability certification are outsourced. The main focus areas are retail, office, healthcare and hospitality, followed by residential and, to a lesser extent, logistics and data centres.

In the area of consulting and marketing services for brokerage, the companies in the group develop a turnover of more than 115 million euro in 2024 and employ more than 570 people. Residential for sale represents the most traded asset class, followed by office and retail, while capital market activities account for about 8 per cent of total volumes.

Project management confirms a central role in the monitored perimeter: the ten participating companies are close to EUR 60 million in turnover in 2024, with an average of almost EUR 5.9 million per company. Within the companies in the sample, the weight of property management is also growing, accounting for almost a quarter of the segment's total turnover.