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Where Foreign Investors Are Buying Properties in Italy
http://www.mundoofarticles.com/articles/37378/1/Where-Foreign-Investors-Are-Buying-Properties-in-Italy/Page1.html
Simone Rossi
Simone Rossi works for the Italian property portal http://www.gate-away.com. http://Gate-away.com is the leading property portal specialized in the promotion of property in Italy to foreign investors. 
By Simone Rossi
Published on 12/29/2009
 
A new study conducted by the Gate-awaycom intelligence department has revealed where and what foreign buyers are willing to invest on in Italy by comparing the data collected from the enquiries received so far in 2009

A new study conducted by the Gate-away.com intelligence department has revealed where and what foreign buyers are willing to invest on in Italy by comparing the data collected from the enquiries received so far in 2009.

The report has highlighted that the interest of foreign buyers is still mainly for the most popular regions of Italy but that also less known regions are becoming ever more popular, attracting interest of overseas investors.

Tuscany is still the most wanted region with the 19.52% of the enquiries, followed by Le Marche (12.85%) and Liguria (11.12%). In a range between 6.35% and 6.95% there are Apulia, Abruzzo, Calabria, Lombardy and Piedmont. Sardinia and Umbria rank 9 and 10 with 5.76% and 4.49% respectively.

Despite Tuscany keeps leading the way we can see that the gap between Tuscany and the other region has been narrowing in the last few years, meaning that the interest in properties is spreading throughout the Italian territory. This is due mainly to low cost airlines that opened up to new areas of Italy, thus new property market, but it is also due to an increasing number of estate agents in those areas who started to market their properties to overseas buyers making the choice of properties in those regions wider, whereas before when a potential buyer wanted to invest in an unknown area of Italy found it very hard to spot any property availability and had to divert the interest in another, more popular, area.

The average asking price of the properties enquired is €288,344 with the peak of €516,013 of Liguria, where many Russian buyers have sent enquiries, and €120,509 of Calabria. Tuscany received enquiries for properties with an average home value of €371,252, against an average price of all properties listed in this region of €690,964.

The majority of the enquiries were for houses instead of apartments, the 34% of the properties had a garden and a 12% had a swimming pool.

If we have a look at who is looking where we see that while Tuscany, as said above, is the favourite region by the majority of buyer's nationalities, Liguria is the region that has enchanted the most Russian who like also the beautiful Lake Como, and Swedish buyers, who like also Calabria.

UK property investors prefer Le Marche, French are quite fond of Puglia along with Sardinia, Dutch tend to like Lombardy and Le Marche and US buyers, apart from Tuscany, choose Calabria and Abruzzo which, along with Le Marche, is also liked by German home investors.

As for the budget the richest are, without surprise, the Russians with an average price of properties enquired of €869,484 followed by Dutch buyers with an average of €410,973. The “poorest” seem to be the Germans (€232,784) followed by the Belgians and the Swedish (respectively €249,212 and €265,056). UK buyers beat US with an average of €298,744 against €269,475.

Gate-away.com foresees that the demand of foreign investors in properties in Italy will increase in the future, as during the credit crunch Italy has shown that its property market is one of the most solid in the whole world and as new markets open up such as Czech republic, India and China which are already showing a growing interest in properties in Italy