Investment properties to buy in Italy: how much it costs in Italy's main cities

Buying property in Italy can be a great investment. Recent data state that smaller sized properties are still the choice of investors who decide to make a purchase with the aim of generating income in Italy's main cities, and according to Tecnocasa, even with the pandemic, two-room apartments are the typology most chosen by those who buy in order to obtain income from property investment in Italy. If you're thinking of investing in real estate in Italy in 2021, here's all you need to know, including how much it costs in Italy's main cities to invest in property.

Before the COVID-19 health crisis, many investors opted for what is known in Italy as "short rent", a short-term rental method for which smaller sized flats, studios and two-roomed apartments are the optimal opportunity in terms of yield. With the pandemic, starting in spring 2020, investors in Italy have slowed down, and in many cases stopped, due to the collapse in tourist flows and the decrease in students and out-of-home workers due to the rise in smart working.

By shifting the analysis to the purchases and sales made for investment in Italy in the first six months of 2020 compared to the same period in 2019, there was a slight contraction in large cities: from 24.9% to 24.7%. And this, according to the analysis conducted by the Tecnocasa Group's Studies Office, would explain the contraction in demand for small cuts at a national level.

If we extend the time horizon to nine months, we can see that purchases for investment have recovered and, in the large cities, have gone from 24.8% to 25%. These are decidedly small changes, but they give an idea of how this target group is more sensitive to the pandemic. It is even more interesting to note that the biggest falls in purchases for investment in the first nine months of the year occurred mainly in the cities of northern Italy, where the effect of the pandemic was felt most.

Considering the central areas and an average property with a surface area of 50m2, the cities in which purchases for investment fell most in the first 9 months of 2020 were Genoa (from 17.8% to 16.6%), Milan (from 26.1% to 23.3%), Naples (from 39.1% to 37.2%) and Verona (from 33% to 28.2%).

In all these cities, two-room apartments are still the most popular type of property investment. In Turin, this typology represented 56.1% of sales, in Milan for 51% and in Rome for 41.4%.