More mature and aware Italians when it comes to the real estate market. The blind and unconditional love for the house understood as a safe haven would seem to be waning and investment in brick and mortar takes on a more conscious and rational perspective, given that Italians seem to be definitively aware that the price of houses can even go down.
This is the most interesting reading that emerged from the sixth edition of the ING International Survey "Case & Mortgages" - carried out on a sample of around 15.000 individuals from 15 countries in Europe, the United States and Australia - which analyzed people's perceptions of their home in relation to the level of prices, housing costs and the ability to return to the expected spending budget.
Compared to the 2016 survey, the number of Italians who see the purchase of a house as an investment for their savings that will never devalue is decreasing. Of the sample interviewed, in fact, only 3 out of 10 (28% of the sample) believe that the price of houses cannot go down.
A real change of perspective compared to the 2016 survey, when almost half of compatriots believed that homes would never lose value (47% of the sample).
We are facing a "new realism" on the part of the Italian population historically accustomed to almost uncritically consider brick as a safe haven par excellence.
“The relationship of Italians with real estate investment shows growing signs of maturity – commented Paolo Pizzoli, Senior Economist of ING Italia – The acknowledgment of a growing part of the population that house prices can also fall takes place in fact in a context in which the Italian real estate market had not shown clear signs of the existence of a speculative bubble. The drop in house prices, which began in 2012, has almost stopped, and the recovery underway in the economy has generated a recovery in disposable income which has improved the ability of Italians to access the real estate market“.
If we look at the other countries involved in the survey, in the United Kingdom and in Germany the percentages of those who think that prices cannot go down are even higher, with 22% and 25% respectively of the sample interviewed.
Italians, on the other hand, remain the most dubious in Europe regarding the growth of house prices in the short term (1 year). In fact, the number of interviewees who believe in a rise in prices in the next 1 months remains practically unchanged compared to the previous year (+12%), with a decidedly more cautious attitude compared to the rest of Europe: 38% against a European average of 59%. Immediately after Italy comes the United Kingdom, where the percentage of those who expect a rise in prices literally collapses from 57% in 2016 to 44% (-13%), a figure probably still affected by the effect of Brexit .
Regarding the current perception of house costs, the study for the third year in a row confirms that many Europeans consider current house prices high (61%) with a peak in Luxembourg (92%) and with the lowest values in Italy (51%) and the Netherlands (50%).
The survey also highlighted other aspects worthy of note: compared to 2016, Italians seem to encounter fewer difficulties in meeting the cost of housing, but even today one in three Italians (33%) declares they have problems in meeting the rent of monthly rent, against 22% of those who took out a mortgage for the purchase of a house. In both cases, these are higher percentages than the European average, which sees only 21% of tenants and 19% of borrowers reporting difficulties in meeting their monthly commitments.
“The benefits of the economic recovery, although evident in the aggregate data on employment, have for the moment made it possible to only partially alleviate the greater difficulties of Italians in meeting rent or mortgage expenses” concludes Pizzoli.
