The interviews for the Italian Housing Market Survey were carried out between 24 September and 19 October 2015. A total of 1,262 estate agents took part and provided information on house sales, rentals and related prices in the reference quarter (July-September 2015) and on the short-term outlook.
Main findings
House prices
The proportion of estate agents reporting a decline in sales prices decreased again, from 56.4 in the previous survey to 51.5 per cent, while the proportion reporting stable prices rose from 42.7 to 47.3 per cent. This trend is common to both urban and non-urban areas.
Sales
The proportion of estate agents that sold at least one property remained substantially unchanged since the previous survey at 71.6 per cent, but rose by about seven percentage points compared with the same quarter in 2014 – a figure that was therefore net of the seasonal effects particularly pronounced in the summer months. Opinions on demand conditions were beginning to improve: the balance between the proportion of estate agents reporting an increase and those reporting a decrease in the number of potential buyers returned positive, standing at 6.1 percentage points (up from -4.3 in the July survey and from -22.7 in the October 2014 survey).
Mandates to sell
The balance between responses indicating an increase or a decrease in the stock of mandates to sell remained substantially unchanged at 18 percentage points, although that referring to new mandates recorded a new downturn, falling from 12.3 to 9.7 percentage points. The gap between asking prices and offers is still the main reason given for loss of mandates: 59.2 per cent of those interviewed reported that sellers found the offers received too low, while 58.6 per centreported that buyers felt the asking prices were still too high. The share of estate agencies attributing the cancellation of mandates to difficulties in obtaining a mortgage continued to decrease (to 27.8 per cent compared with roughly 37 per cent in the third quarter of 2014).
Negotiations and selling times
The average discount on sellers’ initial asking prices fell slightly to 14.9 per cent. The average time between the start of a mandate and the sale of a property remained unchanged at 9.4 months.
Financing house purchases
The proportion of house purchases financed with a mortgage decreased to 65.7 per cent and the loan-to-value ratio decreased to 64.2 per cent.
Rentals
The percentage of estate agents that reported renting out at least one property rose slightly to 84.8 per cent, up from 82.7 in the previous survey and from 83.7 in the survey a year earlier. There was a decline in the share that reported a fall in rents, down from 38.6 per cent in the July survey to 34.6 per cent, while those declaring that rents were stable increased from 58.3 to 63.0 per cent. Only 21.0 per cent of estate agents expect rents to fall in the current quarter, while over three quarters expect them to remain unchanged.
The average discount on rental prices in relation to the initial asking prices remained unchanged at 6.3 per cent. The balance between replies indicating an increase and those indicating a decrease in new mandates to let remained basically stable compared with the previous quarter at -7.7 percentage points, although this figure is considerably lower than that recorded for the same quarter of 2014; about 63 per cent of estate agents continued to report the number of new mandates as being stable.
Outlook for the agents’ own markets
Estate agents' expectations for the short term for their own reference market were decidedly more optimistic. The balance between positive and negative assessments for the current quarter was positive at 7.4 percentage points, a clear reversal of the negative values for the previous quarter and for the year-earlier period (-16.9 and -20.4 per cent respectively); the upswing was recorded both in urban and non-urban areas. Accordingly, the outlook for new mandates to sell improved compared with the previous survey: the balance rose from 4.3 to 13.1 percentage points. The share of agents expecting prices to fall in the current quarter decreased from 47.5 to 42.6 per cent, which mainly reflects the increase in those expecting prices to hold stable, from 52.1 to 56.1 per cent.
Outlook for the national housing market
Expectations for the national market show that the pessimism expressed in the previous quarter and in the corresponding quarter of 2014 is fading: the balance of opinions on the short-term outlook was essentially zero compared with -19.9 and -33.7 respectively. The improvement reflects above all the decidedly favourable expectations in the South and Islands. The positive expectations for the medium term (two years) strengthened: the share of agents forecasting an improvement increased from 43.1 per cent in July to 53.1 per cent, while the share expecting a deterioration decreased from 20.9 to 12.1 per cent.
