The real estate market in 2021
In February 2021 on this blog we tried to analyze the impact of the pandemic caused by the COVID 19 virus on the Italian real estate market, focusing in particular on the residential real estate market. A picture had emerged whose tints were less gloomy than expected, a 14% drop in overall transactions for the year 2020 was more than justified by the months of total lockdown, a slow recovery in the summer months of the same year. and again the decline due to the rise in infections and the consequent new restrictions contributed to creating a climate of partial confidence, conditioned by the outcome of the national vaccination campaign and the rebound of the general economic framework.
Now that over 80% of Italian citizens have received at least the first dose of the vaccine and the forecasts for the Italian GDP all travel around the value of + 6%, let’s try to take stock of the situation again. To have an analysis as consistent as possible with that of last February, we will use the same sources, namely data from Istat, the Revenue Agency and Nomisma.
The general trend of the market
House prices rose in the second quarter of 2021: this is confirmed by the recent publication of the Istat Index, this rise in house prices is mainly due to the increase in the values of new homes (+ 2%), while existing house prices (+ 0.1%). But also on the sales front there is an expansion in volumes, especially in the residential sector, as reported by the Real Estate Market Observatory of the Revenue Agency.
The growth is therefore double and concerns both “the cost of the brick” and the market, as the Real Estate Market Observatory of the Revenue Agency always reports: between April and June of this year, sales in the residential sector increased by 73.4% compared to 2020 (the latter period, which obviously suffered from the restrictions and difficulties associated with the pandemic period). According to Nomisma, the forecasts for the residential market for the next few years are also consistent with the climate of improvement and confidence in progress. The sales, as mentioned, will return to around 600 thousand in 2021, to reach 651 thousand in 2023, recovering the forecast levels of 2019. Purchase intentions (in particular, the purchase of the first house or replacement of the same) they have therefore experienced a surge: from 2.4 million to 3.3 million families willing to invest in the real estate sector in the last year.
Also according to Nomisma, the interest of Italians is clearly shifting towards the purchase of a home, prevailing over renting. 62% of the demand (6 percentage points more than the previous year) is represented by people wishing to buy a house and the average age of buyers is less than 45 years. The remaining 38% is oriented towards leasing.
Another fact to take into account that emerged from Nomisma’s studies is the change in the valuation practices of properties, for example, among various factors, the assessment of the energy performance of the property has acquired a predominant importance, in fact a general repricing due to energy redevelopment interventions, in alignment with the provisions of the Superbonus, which provides for the jump of two energy classes.
Smart working effect
A paragraph of our article from last February was titled the same way, given the evident impact of smart working on workers’ habits during the pandemic, but is there still a “smart working effect”? Yes undoubtedly, but beware, as a study by Cushman & Wakefield, one of the largest private companies in the world real estate market, highlights, the future of offices will not be binary: we will not only work in the office or only from home, but a hybrid model will prevail. The office as we have known it to date will not die completely, but its role in the workplace of many will undoubtedly be different and office work will be less frequent than before the pandemic. It is therefore reasonable to predict that the “escape from the city” in favor of the countryside and the suburbs will be a trend in the real estate market for a long time to come.
Ecobonus
How is the measurement going? One year after the launch of the 110% Superbonus, again according to Nomisma’s studies, it emerges that sworn interventions are growing, but not at the expected speed, especially due to regulatory uncertainty. In particular, there is a decrease in potentially affected families, compared to May 2020, and still a reduced rate of involvement of condominiums which, we recall, are the main realities for which the initiative was designed. For further information on the eco-bonus and other home bonuses, find other articles in our Blog section.