The construction activity, as emerges from the very recent data on building permits, signals an alarm bell of slowdown of the albeit feeble recovery started last year. The last quarter of 2017, in fact, saw a reduction in the number of authorized homes, compared to the previous quarter, by 4,4% and, in non-residential surfaces, by 16,4%. A setback after only four positive quarters in the housing sector and six (albeit with a small mole) in the tertiary and manufacturing sectors. evidently, pre-election uncertainties and political risk, even in local authorities, have had a negative influence on investment choices and the purchase of new properties.
An economic context that is not capable, however, of reversing a ten-year trend characterized by a pronounced contraction in the building sector. In fact, the long-term cycle sees the emergence of a structural crisis in both sectors. In the residential sector, we went from 50 homes started up per quarter in the early 2000s to 70 in 2005, to return to around 40 in 2008. With the sovereign debt crisis, the permits issued first halved in 2012, reaching around 20 and again reduced by 50%, starting from 2015, with a value of around 10 apartments per quarter. A similar situation regards new non-residential properties which have gone from a value of 7 million sq.m. granted per quarter in the early 2000s to less than 3 million in more recent years.
One aspect that should not be underestimated are the projections on the territory of the crisis. There are no major differences at the level of the macro-regions as the fall in building activity is relatively homogeneous between the Centre-North and the South. On the other hand, we note significant differences between the urban typologies. The weight of large cities and capitals accounted for 22,4% of the total in the residential sector in 2015 and fell to 10,8% in 2017. As the purchase of properties in large cities has proved to be particularly lively in the last three years , these data demonstrate the current deadlock in urban regeneration policies in all the main areas, with the exception of Milan. It is fatal damage to the quality of metropolitan life and to economic and employment development not to deal with the suburbs or abandoned central areas (on all the railway areas) with large-scale interventions for the reconstruction of neighborhoods and office complexes.
Source: inPiù.net
