Italy’s Real Estate: A Time Machine to the Past
Ah, Italy! The land of fine wine, exquisite pasta, and… ancient buildings galore! Just when you thought you knew everything there was to know about Italian properties, new data comes in and it feels like stepping into an antique shop—all charming and lovely until you realize it could collapse at any moment. It seems that over 74% of Italian properties are more than 40 years old. And if you think this is a staggering number, wait till you see how high it climbs in large cities—an eye-watering 85%! That’s more age than your great-grandma at a family dinner, folks!
The Old and the Vulnerable
With around 4 million residential buildings constructed before the 1960s, it begs the question: should we be buying homes or heritage sites? Andrea De Maio, the suave President of the Inarcassa Foundation, noted that 20% of these buildings are in “very poor condition.” Very poor? That’s putting it mildly! It sounds more like a real estate horror story than a market report.
Let’s face it, Italy is sitting on a real estate time bomb ticking down to a tremor—378 extreme environmental events already this year, and it could increase by 22% this year! They’ve even got seismic activity that releases energy more intense than an Italian cooking show! But that’s the beauty of it; when something goes wrong, you don’t just fix the building, you may have to throw in a plate of spaghetti for good measure!
The Catch-22: Too Old, Too Big, Too Vulnerable
With buildings that are excessively large, old, and designed without any seismic regulations, it’s a classic example of a catch-22 (or should we say catch-20?). You might just want to toss a grenade or three into a property transaction! Italy is above the EU average for built surface area, standing tall at 6.6%, which sounds impressive until you realize it’s just a pile of crumbling bricks and bad decisions.
Enter the Building File—Don’t Leave Home Without it!
The Inarcassa Foundation suggests a grand idea: a well-organized census of all buildings. An identity card for homes? You mean they could finally get the recognition they deserve! Imagine that—like your house having its own Instagram account, posting updates on its state of health and safety!
With 5.3% of homes insured against natural disasters, it seems Italians have taken the philosophy of ‘Why worry about a potential earthquake when you can just eat another slice of pizza?’ But let me tell you, while you’re munching away, those properties are quietly crumbling beneath you!
Technology is the New Renaissance
There’s a call for a centralized computerized system reminiscent of a tech renaissance—one that manages a digital version of the building files. “One direction”, as Riccardo Ciciriello suggests: a cloud-based identity card for every building. Sounds fancy, right? You could swipe right on your future home, and instead of potential disaster, it would give you a full diagnosis! Built before Wi-Fi? Lacking seismic upgrades? Challenge accepted!
A Final Thought: The Ticket to Safety
In the end, amidst the crumbling bricks and shaky structures, the future of Italian properties could shine brighter—if only we all agreed to get our act together. We need to face the music (and probably a little bit of opera) and prepare for our long-overdue “real estate makeover.” Who knows? One day you might be sitting in your structurally safe, modernized Italian villa, eating pizza with a clear conscience. Until then, stay alert, stay insured, and keep the spaghetti handy for emergencies!
Over 74% of Italian properties are more than forty years old, a percentage that rises to 85% for large cities, around 4 million residential buildings, more or less 40% of all buildings, have been built in our country before the 1960s. “We must start a large census of Italian buildings and digitize the information for the safety and prevention of our real estate assets: the building file, the identity card of our homes, should be progressively made mandatory”. This is the request of the Inarcassa Foundation during the event organized today in Bologna which was also attended by the Deputy Minister of Infrastructure and Transport, Galeazzo Bignami.
THE ITALIAN REAL ESTATE: TOO OLD AND TOO EXPOSED. In our country, 12.5 million residential buildings have been registered (Cresme data) and of these 2 out of 10 are in very poor condition “A vulnerable real estate asset, with too many buildings – Italy is above the EU average for built surface area, 6 .6% against 4.2% in the rest of Europe – too old, often too large, and which have been intervened on inappropriately over the years” said the president of the Inarcassa Foundation, Andrea De Maio. “A set of factors that makes our real estate assets extremely exposed to environmental risks, from seismic to hydrogeological events”. In 2023 alone, our country was hit by 378 extreme events, a number which according to Legambiente estimates predicts an increase of 22% for this year. Furthermore, although Italy, when compared to the rest of the world, has a moderate seismic risk, what is instead high is the relationship between the energy released by the seismic event and the damage generated. “And this – explains Di Maio – precisely because of the state in which the buildings are located and the fact that they were built in the absence of seismic regulations”. From the point of view of the load-bearing structure, in fact, 56% of the buildings present in the areas identified based on risk from 1 to 3 were built in load-bearing masonry (stone or brick) highly vulnerable to seismic risk.
INARCASSA FOUNDATION: “A LARGE CENSUS FOR A SAFER REAL ESTATE ASSETS”. “To protect our heritage, make it safer and more efficient, even at an energy level, we need a large real estate census” added De Maio. “In this sense, the gradual introduction of the mandatory nature of the Building File, starting from newly constructed buildings and those affected by significant renovations, to be progressively extended to older ones, would improve not only the knowledge of the state of health of our properties, by digitizing and making information such as seismic vulnerability, energy class and maintenance plan always available, but it would accelerate the process of computerization of the Land Registry, representing at the same time a prevention tool capable of certifying the safety level of buildings and helping planning of the necessary interventions”.
ONLY 5.3% OF HOMES ARE INSURED. In Italy from 1944 to July 2023, damage caused by earthquakes and hydrogeological instability is estimated at 358 billion euros. Between 1944 and 2009, an average of 4.2 billion euros per year was spent, a figure which from 2010 to 2023 rose to 6 billion euros per year, but while spending to repair the damage caused by seismic events remained on historical levels (2.7 billion against in the period 2009-2023 against 3.1 in the past), as regards hydro-geological instability, spending tripled from an average of 1 billion per year to 3.3 billion . Despite this, Italians insure themselves little: the percentage of homes insured against natural disasters, earthquakes and floods in our country, according to ANIA data, is equal to 5.3% of the total. “In this sense, the building file could represent a tool capable of promoting and simplifying access to insurance products – explained Fabrizio Mauceri, insurance expert.
TECHNOLOGY: A SINGLE DIRECTION IS NEEDED FOR THE FILE. Furthermore, during the event, the technological needs that a similar real estate census operation would bring with it were also analysed: “the need to create a single computerized system to manage what we could define as the ‘Electronic Identity Card of buildings ‘, avoiding making the mistakes of the past” said Riccardo Ciciriello, expert in Information Technology in the construction field. “We need a “direction” – explains the expert – who defines the standards and takes care of the functional analysis for the creation of a single IT system at a national level. A solution first and foremost in the cloud and with multi-access logics differentiated by aggregate geographical areas”. Without forgetting that we will soon have to comply with the EU Green Houses directive. “This IT system, if done well – concluded Ciciriello – could serve the purpose, considering that the first step envisaged by the directive is the census of all the buildings”.
