Albeit much slower than in the past global house prices continue to rise. According to the International Monetary Fund, in fact, at the beginning of 2016 they had returned on average at 2007 levels. The data available for the main countries show a growth in prices almost everywhere, with negative changes only in 12 countries, including Italy and China. Significant increases are recorded in Sweden, the United Kingdom, the United States and Spain. Prices also increased in Germany and Japan, where quotations had recorded negative variations during the entire period of growth of the sector, between 1997 and 2007. In none of these countries are critical situations of the indicators of over/underestimation of the market.
The decline in the prices of residential properties in Italy shows no signs of stopping. In the second quarter of this year, prices fell by 1,4% y/y: this is the 18th consecutive trend decline. The decline was particularly evident for the prices of new homes, which recorded their worst figure since the second quarter of 2014. Opposite news continues to arrive from the sales side, which grew by 22,9% y/y between April and June ( after +20,6% y/y in the first quarter).
Recent events in Italy impose reflections on the quality and age of the housing stock. An assessment in this sense is possible only starting from the data collected by Istat during the last housing census, which dates back to 2011. At that date, in Italy, there were about 12,2 million buildings for residential use (about 31,2, 31 million homes). More than half were built before the 1971s, around 1990% between 7,4 and 1991, 2000% between 70 and 1974 and the remainder in subsequent years. The average age of the residential building stock is therefore high, and over XNUMX% of the buildings were built before the anti-seismic legislation came into force (XNUMX).
More attention to recovery and rejuvenation of the building heritage of the country would have the double advantage of guaranteeing greater security and favoring the recovery of the construction sector, one of the sectors most penalized by the crisis, and in almost constant decline since 2008. In mid-2016, the added value of the sector was 33,1 percentage points lower than that of the first quarter of 2008, against a lag of value added of the entire economy of less than 8 percentage points.
