Italian House Prices Rose 4.0% in the Second Quarter, With Turin Up 8.5% and Milan Up 2.4%
Istat put Italian house prices 4.0% above a year earlier in the second quarter of 2026. Turin led the big cities at 8.5%, Milan trailed at 2.4%.
Italy's residential property price index rose 1.7% against the first quarter and 4.0% against the second quarter of 2025, according to the provisional estimate Istat published on 17 September 2026. The index reached 104.2 on a 2025 base of 100. Two numbers inside that headline are doing most of the work, and they point in opposite directions.
New build is running ahead of the existing stock
Prices of newly built dwellings rose 2.7% on the quarter and 5.0% on the year, reaching an index level of 104.5. Existing dwellings rose 1.5% on the quarter and 3.7% on the year, at 104.0. The gap between the two annual rates is 1.3 percentage points, and it runs in the direction construction costs would predict rather than the direction demand would.
Carried through the first half, the annual average for 2026 currently stands at 3.8%. Transactions, which Istat tracks alongside prices, were essentially unchanged at 0.1% above the second quarter of 2025. Prices are moving; the number of deals behind them is not.
The fast region is not the rich one
The geographic split does not follow the usual north-south price ladder. The Centre posted the strongest annual growth at 5.1%, ahead of the North-East at 4.2% and the North-West at 3.9%. The South and Islands came last at 2.6%.
That ordering matters because the North-West contains Milan, Italy's most expensive market and the one that led the national index through most of the post-2021 cycle. It is now the second-slowest of the four areas.
Turin, Rome, Milan
The city figures make the same point more sharply. Turin rose 8.5% over the year, Rome 6.4% and Milan 2.4%. Milan is growing at less than a third of Turin's pace.
There is a plain reading of this and a less comfortable one. The plain reading is catch-up: cheaper cities have more room to rise. The less comfortable one is that Milan reached a level where the marginal buyer stopped following, and the cities behind it are absorbing the demand that used to go there. Istat's release does not distinguish between the two, and neither should anyone quoting it.
Where our own numbers sit, and why they read higher
Our Italy row prices the national market at USD 2,354 per square metre as of the 13 September 2026 snapshot, with a monthly rent of USD 16.92 per square metre. That pair gives a gross yield of 8.63%, falling to 6.82% after an effective 21% tax on rental income. Round-trip transaction costs are 14%, among the highest in our coverage, and our bubble score for Italy is 48, in the moderate band. Over ten years the market is up 18.8% in euro and 24.9% in dollars.
Our row shows a 5.2% annual price change in local currency against Istat's 4.0%, and the difference is methodological rather than contradictory. Our price and rent both come from a national asking-price index; Istat's index is built on recorded transactions. Asking prices turn first and overshoot; transaction prices confirm later and by less. Two honest series measuring two different moments in the same sale will not agree, and the useful thing is to know which one you are reading.
Sources: Istat, Prezzi delle abitazioni, II trimestre 2026, provisional estimate, 17 September 2026 https://www.istat.it/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/CS-abitazioni-Q22026.pdf
Market data: Italy