Italian real estate agencies show a significant advantage when selling property compared to private individuals, concluding negotiations in half the time and reducing negotiation margins. The national average to complete a sale is 6.4 months, which drops to 5.8 months with an agency and goes up to 12.2 months among private individuals. The negotiation margin, i.e. the difference between the asking price and the actual price, is 8.6 per cent on average, falling to 8.4 per cent in sales managed by agencies and rising to 10.2 per cent in sales between private individuals.
These data come from the report ‘The role of agencies and private individuals in real estate sales – how negotiation times and margins are changing’ by AgentPricing.com by Reopla, part of the Sprengnetter group, specialised in Big Data Analysis and innovative software and Avm (automated valuation mode) for the real estate sector.
The numbers of purchases and sales
The residential property market in Italy has almost one million properties for sale, of which 85.9% are managed by estate agencies and 14.1% by private individuals. Bologna is the city with the highest percentage of properties managed by agencies (89.4%), while Messina has the highest frequency of negotiations between private individuals (25.2%).
Analysing the top 15 Italian cities by population, privately managed properties have an average price 13% higher than the actual market value. The highest surcharges are found in Venice (+24.6%), Verona (+19.7%), Rome (+19.2%) and Genoa (+17.1%). By contrast, the smallest difference is recorded in Milan (+5.2%), Trieste (+6.5%) and Padua (+7.7%).
According to Patrick Albertengo, co-founder and managing director of Reopla, only a small proportion of real estate sales are handled by private individuals in Italy, while the majority are handled by estate agencies. Negotiations handled by agencies are concluded faster and with a price closer to the starting price thanks to the experience of real estate agents and technological tools that allow more objective evaluations in line with the real market value of the property.
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