Most Italians' homes have a surface area of less than 100m2. The percentage of dwellings that do not exceed this size amounts to 61% of the total number of listings on idealista. This is what emerges from an analysis of the leading technology development portal in Italy.
Dwellings with less than 40m2 represent 4% of the market, those between 40 and 60m2 represent 14% of the available supply, as do dwellings between 60 and 75m2. The most common type is housing between 75 and 90m2, which accounts for 17% of the entire market, and housing between 90 and 100m2 for 13%. Solutions from 100 metres upwards make up the remaining 39% of the offer, within which the largest types, those exceeding 240m2, account for only 2%.
The study reveals important territorial differences, with a higher frequency of dwellings with a larger living area in the South of Italy, while in the North the supply is generally made up of smaller sizes.
Reggio Calabria, where 69% of the offer is larger than 100m2, is the city with the highest incidence of large square metres on the stock for sale, followed by Padua (68%), Enna and Lecce (both 64%). Modena (63 percent), Agrigento, Vibo Valentia, Caserta (62 per cent in all three cases), Cosenza and Caltanissetta (61 percent in both cases) also exceed the 60 percent threshold.
On the contrary, Turin is the city with the smallest share of available surfaces larger than 100m2; only 25% of the offer. It is followed by Genoa, La Spezia (26% in both cases), Milan and Ravenna (27% in both cases). Rome stands at 32%, Naples at 37%.
Milan is the city where the most houses under 40m2 are sold (8% of supply), followed by Belluno (7%), Sondrio and Naples (6%). In eight other provincial capitals, the statistical incidence of this dimension of housing is 5%, among them Turin, Florence and Bologna. Then gradually the other centres with percentages tapering off to zero in Treviso, Gorizia, Enna, Reggio Calabria, Agrigento, Avellino, Brindisi and Oristano.
Prices per square metre depend on the surface area of the house
The price per square metre also varies according to the size of the house, being generally the more expensive the smaller the property (due to the lower final transaction price), this relationship almost always holds true as the square metres increase.
Thus, the average price per square metre of a house of less than 40m2in Italy reaches 1,800 euro, or 70 percent more than the square metre of houses with more than 240m2- the largest ones considered in this report - which reach 1,058 euro. Prices for the most common type on offer, i.e. between 75 and 90m2 according to the idealista report, are instead at EUR 1,500/m2.
This tendency is reversed in the case of large markets, where more square metres is almost always synonymous with luxury, or in the smaller capitals: for example, in Milan as in Rome, real estate with more than 240 square metres is the most expensive, with an average cost respectively 152% and 38% higher than the smallest sizes, those with less than 40 square metres. The same applies to Turin (96%) and Naples (88%). The capital city with the largest gap between the largest and smallest dwellings is Como (171%).
Considering all Italian capitals, the price differences per square metre reward the smallest types, those with less than 40m2, 2 times out of 3, even compared to the medium-sized ones, those between 100 and 120m2.
In Brindisi, the value per square metre of small dwellings is 102% higher than that of 100/120m2 dwellings, while the difference reaches 96% in Syracuse, 94% in Frosinone, 82% in Bergamo and 80% in Mantua.
In Rome the difference narrows to 9 percent, while in Milan (-28 per cent) the trend is the opposite and prices rise as square metres increase. The same phenomenon can also be observed in Naples (-25%), Turin (-14%) and 30 other capital cities.