Market Overview

In the next three years will expire 16 real estate funds with a total value of about 4.5 billion euro. Of these, in the light of the extensions already approved, about 1.2 billion should be sold by the end of this year. This figure is incompatible with the negligible size of the current market, also due to the concomitant liquidation of the financial instruments reserved for qualified investors considered elusive. However, it will hardly be possible to be granted further delay than that already fixed.
In fact, are being studied initiatives that would aim at liquidate... [MORE]

Economic and social frailty is a recurrent condition amongst different social groups. One of the weakest links of the chain is definitely represented by foreign nationals and one of the first signs of their difficulties is the decrease of remittances sent to their origin countries. In the last ten years, the increase of remittances from Italy has been uninterrupted, reaching the total of 7.4 billion € in 2011 (+12.5% compared to 2010 and + 63.3% since 2006).
According to the most recent data from the Bank of Italy, 2012 was the first year recording a decrease (-7.6%) in remitt... [MORE]

Unlike those countries in which the practices of “green building” are a reality, the Italian market cannot rely on a consistent demand of “green families” as to create a real transformation in the sector and the entire supply chain linked to housing.
Based on the findings of a survey conducted by Nomisma on a representative sample of Italian families, only 3.2% of these possess all the “green” requirements referred to housing and traceable to international guidelines on energy efficiency and building sustainability.
While there i... [MORE]

After the outbreak of the economic crisis of 2008, the forecasts made by the major Italian and international economic research institutes predicted an increase of the 2010 GDP less robust than what it actually was (+ 1% instead of 1.7% ex post).
Probably, such result gave the feeling of being definitively away from the grip of the crisis and helped outline an overly optimistic scenario for the following biennium. In fact, the second recession wave that has hit our economy for the second half of 2010 has definitely caught all experts by surprise: the forecasts made between the beginning of 2010 and... [MORE]

Locate the importance of supply and demand in the flow of credit is not a simple undertaking. It is however, possible to obtain useful information from the observation of some phenomena.
As regards the supply side of the Italian market, it is possible to draw valuable insights both from the observation of the relationship between lending trends to non-financial companies, and from the ratio between investment and gross operating margin, considering the latter as a proxy of the corporation’s financial needs.
As illustrated in the figure below, the growth of loans to non-fin... [MORE]

The real estate market supply and demand are far from equilibrium. Not only on the amount of demands and offers, but also on the quality of the "real estate product". In response to a demand, at least potentially, in average of 10% of energy-efficient homes, only 0.2% of the Italian real estate falls within the highest energy class. Moreover, the continuing contraction of effective market demand, compared to a large increase in supply over the last decade, would not favor a rapid transformation towards market-axis efficiency and sustainability repeatedly reques... [MORE]

The fall of the purchasing power of households and the credit crunch continue to influence the situation in the construction sector. Investments in this sector have shrunk in the last three months of 2012 at a rate similar to that observed in the previous three quarters (-1.1%). Due to this prolonged downward trend, investments have declined by 23% since 2007. In particular, investments in housing fell in the fourth quarter of 2012 by 0.6% (the decline in the last five year amounts to -18%), those in other buildings and constructions decreased by 1,6% (with a decline in the last five year... [MORE]

It is surprising that, despite the current crisis, in 2012 there have been more newly founded enterprises than closed ones. However, unemployment data seems contradictory: the number of unemployed persons has been increasing since the second phase of the recession. There are two possible explanations for this diverging trend.
The first one is related to the labor market. Normally, during recession cycles the discouragement rate increases, resulting in a greater number of inactive people. In this case however, the loss of purchasing power of families has brought many people, who were previ... [MORE]

Despite many Institutions are signalizing a shiny growth at the end of 2013, there are several data that underline the crisis and that turn away the horizon of the economic rise. Also in the Italian real estate market there is someone conjecturing about a “new spring” in the earlier 2014. Apart from the difficulties on the offer side (quality, sustainability, credibility), already highlighted by Nomisma, we also have to consider changes on the demand side, that has not been able to translate potential interests into effective purchases for too much time. Among the parameters on th... [MORE]

Currently, not only families are affected by the dramatic effects of the economic crisis. Enterprises too are facing increasing difficulties. Commonly, it is the non-exporting enterprises who suffer most from the fall of domestic demand. But what is the effect of the current decrease of internal demand on Italian exporting enterprises? If there is no doubt that the capacity to export, more than the firm size or the sector of activity, represents a key element for the success of enterprises, it is uncommon to find “pure exporters”- i.e. enterprises whose revenues come ex... [MORE]

Among the heavy legacies of a recession we can surely count the progressive worsening of the credit quality. According to the last ratings, the volume of the so-called “non-performing loans” should become fixed on levels similar to those of the previous years (€107 billions in 2011, €115 billions in 2012), especially thanks to the effect of the moratoria and to the banking attitude of “postponing” as much as possible probable bad debts provisions. Such amount results certainly moderate if compared to that of other European countries of reference (&euro... [MORE]

There are voices that state that there will be a recovery in the second half of 2013. However, it needs to take into account the legacies of the recession. The latest was actually more indiscriminate, thus hitting both the most productive companies as well as the potential of the economy.
The reasons why the second recession has impacted in a far more indiscriminate manner can be attributed to an unprecedented fall in domestic demand and the block of the selective function of credit. Credit institutions, dealing with weakened budgets due to the financial crisis and suffering, are focused on... [MORE]

Despite forecasts begin to report slight evidence of recovery starting from last months of 2013, in the next two years Italy must necessarily deal with the effects of double-dip recession.
The compression of domestic demand, which occurred heavily during the last year, has effects not limited to companies which operate into the Italian market, but also affects exporters, i.e. the companies more productive. Italian manufacturing exporting companies also operate largely throughout the country (65 per cent of their turnover is obtained in the domestic market) and this has import... [MORE]

An approach used in the economic analysis defines the potential of industry as the degree of facilities’utilization, assuming that this reflects the relationship between the actual production and the potential one (quantity to be estimated). The two recession phases occurred since 2008 have resulted in a strong decrease in the potential, that has fallen to the levels of the early nineties. Obviously, not all the fall is to be considered totally permanent: the potential will return certainly to increase with the activity recovery, yet the question is of... [MORE]

The export performance is one of the few indicators that still remain positive when you look at the numbers of the Italian economy and the European economy as a whole.
Even during 2012 characterized by a GDP reduction, unemployment rising and credit critical situation, Italian exports have continued to grow; so is the case that the latest ISTAT data, referring to the period January-October 2012, reported a growth rate close to 5%.
This figure, however, hides very different dynamics. The positive result of Italian exports derives fro... [MORE]

Italy has to contribute to the saving objective of 20% of EU energy consumption, according to binding national targets. It has been estimated that an investment in energy efficiency of about 18% of the total public real estate (offices and schools) equal to about € 24 billion would result in an increase of the GDP of 1.4%.
However, the positive effects are amplified if there is a fiscal policy accompanying private investment. As shown by the IMF, if normally a fiscal stimulus of 1% (an expansion of the public budget in relation to the GDP of 1%) causes a GDP increas... [MORE]

The Italian economy is going through the most serious crisis in its history. Worse, according to some indicators, than that of the thirties.
Eighty years ago the economic crisis was long and deep, but less than what is currently prospected for the current one. During the Great Depression GDP per capita in volume recovered the pre-recession peak of 1929, after eight years i.e. in 1937. In the present scenario, based on the IMF forecasts in October 2012, the GDP per capita in 2017 will still be significantly below the pre-recession peak of 2007. Although a slight... [MORE]

With the two recessive waves – that of 2008-2009 and the one which began in mid 2011 – the average financial profile of Italian families has greatly deteriorated. The minor decline of households spending has resulted in a marked savings compression: it is not the result of a reduction of income smoothed over time, considered transitional and awaiting for better times, but on the contrary, it is the result of real difficulties, or even the impossibility to set aside money, given the persistent fall in real incomes and the incompressible nature of certain... [MORE]

Over one million families declare to be willing to buy a house, as if to demonstrate the existence of a link which would exclude short-term economic opportunism, as well as a vast demand progressively compressed over the years of recession. As many as 78.4% of these families have expressed their will to proceed with the purchase activating a mortgage. In 2010 the same indication came from one family out of two. A dramatic increase in demand, which comes after two consecutive years of housing purchase loans’ slowdown and a context w... [MORE]

The latest figures published by ISTAT on the Italian labor market are merciless: in October, unemployment rate settles at 11,1%, a level never reached since the late 90s; youth unemployment rate (15-24 years) is as high as 36,5%, a value unobserved since the 80s. However, in apparent contradiction, the number of employees remains stable: in the third quarter of 2012 the number of employees is even the highest since 2009 to today. What can be observed, in fact, is an increase in the number of people seeking work, in a labor market that holds th... [MORE]