The interviews for the Italian Housing Market Survey were carried out between 3 April and 7 May 2014. A total of 1,395 estate agents took part. Information was provided on house sales, rentals and prices in the reference quarter (January-March 2014) and on the outlook for the future.
Main findings
House prices
In April the share of estate agents reporting a decline in selling prices was basically unchanged with respect to the January survey at around 70 per cent. In the opinion of about 29.7 per cent agents, selling prices were stable.
Sales
The share of estate agents selling at least one property in the first quarter of 2014 was 64.0 per cent, down from 65.8 in January. The decrease was less marked compared with the same period in 2013 (which is not subject to seasonal factors), when the share was 64.4 per cent. Some 43.3 per cent of the estate agents asked for the first time about their assessment of the demand for housing reported that the number of people seeing at least one house for sale was basically unchanged from the previous quarter. The balance between reports of an increase and reports of a decrease was -11.7 percentage points.
Mandates to sell
The balance between replies indicating an increase and those reporting a decrease in current mandates to sell narrowed from 29.8 percentage points in the previous survey to 24.8 points, while the balance in reference to new mandates held steady at 20.7 points.
The gap between asking prices and offer prices remained wide. The share of agencies attributing the loss of mandates to sellers’ opinions that offers were too low increased to 55.6 per cent, compared with 50.5 per cent in the January survey, while the percentage reporting an absence of offers to buy because prices were too high was unchanged at 63.3 per cent. There was a further decline in the share of agencies that attributed the loss of mandates to difficulties in obtaining a mortgage, down from 45.8 to 41.7 per cent.
Negotiations and selling times
The average margin for reductions on the selling price in relation to the seller’s initial asking price narrowed slightly from 16 to 15.5 per cent. The time between the start of the mandate to sell and the sale of the property rose from 8.8 to 9.3 months.
Financing house purchases
In the first quarter of 2014, the share of house purchases financed by a mortgage loan rose further, to 62.7 per cent from 60.9 per cent in the January survey. At the same time there was an increase in the loan-to-value ratio for properties from 59.8 per cent to 61.5 per cent.
Rentals
Overall, 81.6 per cent of agencies reported that they had rented out at least one property in the fourth quarter of 2014. Among them, the percentage of agents who noted a decline in rents fell from 61.1 to 57.5 per cent, while those who declared rents were stable rose from 37.4 to 41.6 per cent. The present survey records for the first time the average margin for reductions on rental prices compared with the initial asking prices, which was 7.4 per cent.
New mandates to let (also a new item in this quarter’s survey) were said to be stable by 62.2 per cent of agents. The balance between replies indicating an increase and those reporting a decrease was 5.0 percentage points.
Outlook for the agents' own markets
Agents' assessments of the short-term trends for their own reference markets were better than in the last survey: the negative balance between positive and negative assessments lessened to -2.3 percentage points, from -19.2 points. Overall, 63.2 per cent of agents expected conditions to remain stable, compared with 54 per cent in the previous survey.
The balance of expectations of a rise and a decline in new mandates to sell decreased to 12.2 percentage points, from 17.5 points in the January survey. The decline in the share of agents expecting an increase was accompanied by a higher percentage forecasting that the situation would remain stable, up from 57.1 to 65.0 per cent. Expectations regarding house prices improved, but were still pessimistic: the percentage of agents predicting a fall in prices in the current quarter of 2014 was 52.7 per cent (down from 64.6 per cent in the previous survey), while the share expecting prices to hold stable rose from 34.6 to 46.3 per cent.
The share of agents who expect rents to hold stable in the current quarter rose to 67.6 per cent, from 59.2 per cent in the January survey. The percentage expecting a reduction fell from 39.7 per cent to 30.6 per cent.
Outlook for the national housing market
There was an improvement in expectations regarding the short-term outlook for the national market. The negative balance between expectations of an improvement and those of a deterioration narrowed to -18.8 percentage points, from -36.5 points in the January survey.
Expectations for the medium term (two years) were optimistic: the positive balance between expectations of an improvement and those of a deterioration increased for the third quarter in a row, moving back to the same level as in early 2011 (22.6 percentage points).
