2013: Italian Real Estate Market Prices Fall, It is Time To Buy A House

According to data from Gabetti, real estate market will reverse its downtrend not before 2014; even Fiaip (Italian Federation of professional real estate agents) declares that there will be a slow recovery for the brick market starting from the second half of 2013.In 2012, according to the survey Fiaip made in 16 Italian cities, sales have dropped by more than 17% and, interestingly for those who decide to buy houses in 2013, property prices compared to 2012 are literally collapsed, -11.98%.According to Gabetti prices are dropping even more than how reported by official statistics.The reason is that the owners declare to the agency a higher price, but they are willing to sell and available to treat and make lower prices, even 30% less.Both analyses agree that year 2013 is indeed the right moment for buyers: for the ones who will be able to get a mortgage despite the credit crunch, or for those who decide to make an investment having aside a nest egg.Among the buildings that are mostly unsold in a market already stalled, there are those placed on the lower floors, which have low solar exposure, no elevator and placed in degraded areas. Also according to Gabetti the most popular apartments at the moment, appear to be the 2-room ones, about 60-70 meters, located in large cities, because they are easily resalable and rented.We have to point out that even though prices had fallen in all cities with peaks in Perugia (-17.3%) and Rome ( -15%), they are unfortunately still very high, since the owners/sellers remained anchored to the 2007 market values, today absolutely impossible.Fiaip says: "Although part of the market for sellers is adequate to the current values, as they reduced the gap between asked price and bid price from 15 to 20%, to this day, still a substantial part of the real estate market continues to be out of business."Operators in the sector reported three causes, all closely related to each other: the collapse in demand for mortgages by households (down from 42% compared to previous 12 months), poor working conditions of many breadwinners and the strong fiscal pressure that the «House» continues to suffer (see the Imu tax).