Italian Asking Prices Edged Up 0.1% in August to €2,031 per Square Metre

Italian asking prices rose 0.1% in August to €2,031 per square metre, up 3.6% on the year, though the three-month trend is still down 1.4% overall.

Italian sellers were asking €2,031 per square metre at the end of August, 0.1% more than in July and 3.6% more than a year earlier, according to the idealista index published on 3 September. The monthly gain sits on top of a softer medium-term reading: across the previous three months the national average is down 1.4%.

Fifteen regions up, five down, and none of them far

Fifteen of Italy's twenty regions posted a monthly increase. Valle d'Aosta led at 4.4%, ahead of Sardegna at 2.7% and Basilicata at 2.0%. The declines were shallow enough to be noise — Toscana and Campania each shed 0.1%, Lazio and Lombardia 0.3%, Emilia-Romagna was unchanged — which is precisely why the national figure barely moved. When the two biggest regional markets by value, Lombardia and Lazio, are the ones slipping, a headline of plus 0.1% is doing more work than it looks.

Milan stands still while Naples and Turin push on

Among the principal city markets the movement was southward and westward. Napoli and Torino both gained 1.5% over the month, Roma and Genova 0.9%. Milano, still the most expensive city in the country at €5,681 per square metre, was flat month on month and up 3.5% over the year — marginally behind the national annual pace. Venezia follows on €4,931 and Bolzano on €4,907.

An asking-price index is not a transaction index

idealista measures what vendors put on the portal, not what buyers eventually sign for. In a market where the quarterly trend has turned negative while the monthly and annual readings stay positive, that distinction is the whole story: sellers reprice slowly, and the gap between advertised and achieved widens before asking prices themselves give way. The regional pattern reinforces the caution: the biggest monthly gains came from Valle d'Aosta, Sardegna and Basilicata, three of Italy's smallest markets by population, while the two largest by value edged down.

How Italy scores on our own numbers

Glopra's data puts Italy's gross rental yield at 6.61%, one of the higher readings among the western European markets we track — Germany sits at 3.42% and France at 4.83% — and scores Italian bubble risk at 48 out of 100, in the moderate band. Our national average of $1,730 per square metre is built from transaction-based sources rather than portal listings, which is why it sits below the idealista figure; the two are measuring different things and are not in conflict.

For a buyer, the practical reading is that Italy remains the cheapest of the large western European markets on a per-square-metre basis while yielding more than either of its northern neighbours. The risk sitting behind that yield is the quarterly direction: three consecutive months of softening asking prices is not yet a downturn, but it is the shape one starts with.

Sources: idealista/news Italia, August 2026 price index, 3 Sep 2026 https://www.idealista.it/news/immobiliare/residenziale/2026/09/03/442591-prezzi-delle-case-stabili-0-1-ad-agosto-3-6-in-un-anno-scopri-i-valori-nella-tua; Zeroventiquattro, 3 Sep 2026 https://www.zeroventiquattro.it/economia-e-finanza/idealista-prezzi-delle-case-stabili-01-ad-agosto-36-tendenziale/

Market data: Italy