House Prices and Housing Wealth in Italy

31 Pages Posted: 17 Jul 2008

Date Written: June 16, 2008

Abstract

In Italy there is no official source of information on house prices. Data on this issue are collected by several sources, each of them with its own advantages and disadvantages. Data for a representative but small sample of households are collected by the Bank of Italy's Survey of Household Income and Wealth (SHIW). In this paper we present a method for estimating the price per square metre of the average Italian house - resorting to different sources - and compare the results with the SHIW estimates. According to our findings, the SHIW estimates for 2002 turn out to be very close to market values. We then compare the SHIW estimates with Census data, showing that the survey overestimates the average surface area of houses while it strongly underestimates the number of secondary dwellings. Overall, in 2002 SHIW-based housing wealth was about 14 per cent lower than macroeconomic estimates.

Keywords: Households, Wealth, House prices

JEL Classification: D31, E21

Suggested Citation

Cannari, Luigi and Faiella, Ivan, House Prices and Housing Wealth in Italy (June 16, 2008). Bank of Italy Temi di Discussione (Working Paper) No. A4, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1162109 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1162109

Luigi Cannari (Contact Author)

Bank of Italy ( email )

Via Nazionale 91
Rome, 00184
Italy

Ivan Faiella

Bank of Italy ( email )

Via Nazionale 91
00184 Roma
Italy

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