Expectations for the end of the year indicate a total of 13 thousand sales of offices in Italy by the end of December 2022, up from 12,419 sales of 2021
At the top of the Italian cities with the highest number of sales of offices in the first half of 2022 there is Milan with 652 transactions, followed, at a great distance, by Rome (386)
After the slump in the first half of 2020 (-24.5 percent compared to the same period in 2019), the office market has rebounded rapidly, but black clouds are on the horizon. In the first six months of 2022, office sales in Italy jumped 75.2% compared to the first lockdown, standing at 6,395, surpassing the levels reached in the pre-pandemic period (+32.2%).
The office market in Italy: trends and expectations for 2023
A boom began in 2021 (+65.26%), which continued in 2022 but at a decidedly milder pace: compared to double-digit rises, in the January-June 2022 period, the increase was only 6% compared to twelve months ago.
Expectations for the end of the year indicate a total of 13,000 transactions by December, up from 12,419 purchases and sales for the whole of 2021. Between late 2022 and early 2023, traders expect the sector to shrink due to rising inflation and interest rates.
Highlighting this is a report produced by Reopla, a Turin-based PropTech company and part of the Sprengnetter Group, titled “Covid: the impact on office buying and selling in Italy two years later,,” which analyzed the trend of office buying and selling in Italy and the top 10 cities by population from 2011 to 2022.
“Among the determining factors could be the ‘attractive’ prices reached post-lockdown by commercial premises and offices, which, penalized by the extremely negative forecasts on the market in question due to pandemic and smart-working, have returned to represent an excellent medium- and long-term opportunity for real estate funds and institutional investors,” commented Patrick Albertengo, co-founder and managing director of Reopla, who, however, then added: “The market, however, is already consolidating and looking ahead, a significant contraction in buying and selling is to be expected for the last quarter of 2022 and the first quarter of 2023, mainly due to rising interest rates, the impact of inflation on SMEs, as well as the rising cost of electricity and gas as a result of the geopolitical situation.”
Trend in the sales of offices in the main Italian cities
At the top of the cities with the highest purchases and sales in the 1st half of 2022 is Milan, with 652 transactions, followed considerably by Rome (386). Next, we find Naples (117), Palermo (110), Turin (103), Genoa (99), Bologna (81), Florence (75), Bari (48), and Catania (18).
The capital is the city where the recovery has been most robust in the first half of 2022, with +133% in purchases and sales two years after the first lockdown. It is followed by Palermo, with a 127.62 percent increase, Naples (115.90 percent), and Genoa (110.72 percent). In Milan, on the other hand, office buying and selling increased by 54.02% during the same period, in line with Turin (55.05%) and Florence (50.03%). Bologna closes with an increase of only 8.21%.
