½ûÂþÌìÌÃ

[QUOTE=greatscott]Does anyone know if there is some public information (website?) that can be found on what houses actually sold for in different regions of Italy?[/QUOTE]

There's a service provided by Camera di commercio (chambers of commerce) called borsa immobiliare ("real estate stock exchange" bad transaltion ?:o ) that gives information about purchases prices.
If you go on google and search "borsa" "immobiliare" and the area you are interested (i.e. "roma") you'll find the link. Many sites have an english version too (i.e. Roma)

That's a subscription service, so without shelling-out [url=http://www.borsaimmobiliare.roma.it]€25[/url], I guess there's no way to find out if they offer a service similar to the fascinating [url=http://www.nethouseprices.com/]Net House Prices[/url] in the UK, which enables you to find out what your friends, neighbours and bosses paid for their houses. Somehow, I doubt it.

[quote=Marc]That's a subscription service, so without shelling-out [URL="http://www.borsaimmobiliare.roma.it"]€25[/URL], I guess there's no way to find out if they offer a service similar to the fascinating [URL="http://www.nethouseprices.com/"]Net House Prices[/URL] in the UK, which enables you to find out what your friends, neighbours and bosses paid for their houses. Somehow, I doubt it.[/quote]

Unfortunately Marc, Net House Prices doesn't necessarily show what people paid for their houses as it also shows remortgaging e.g. our house is on there as being sold in 2003 when in fact we only remortgaged and the value shown is what our mortgage is which is less than a quarter of the value of the house!

[QUOTE=brendangfc]Unfortunately Marc, Net House Prices doesn't necessarily show what people paid for their houses as it also shows remortgaging [/QUOTE]

2 things

1. If you want to know house prices in UK - go to
[url]http://www.ourproperty.co.uk/[/url]
This site shows property values as registered with the Land Registry - and should be accurate.

2. The ½ûÂþÌìÌà site - does it give 'actual' or 'declared house prices?

[quote=alan haynes]If you want to know house prices in UK - go to
[URL="http://www.ourproperty.co.uk/"]http://www.ourproperty.co.uk/[/URL]
This site shows property values as registered with the Land Registry - and should be accurate.[/quote]

Unfortunately Alan ourproperty suffers from exactly the same problem as netsales - it shows remortgages as well as sales and shows the remortgage at the value of the remortgage not the value of the house.

[QUOTE=greatscott]Does anyone know if there is some public information (website?) that can be found on what houses actually sold for in different regions of Italy?[/QUOTE]

If you go on the FIAIP website, (½ûÂþÌìÌà Federation of Estate Agents) [url]www.fiaip.it[/url] , there is a section that tells you the value of properties in the different regions and/or cities. You need to click on "Osservatorio Immobiliare", then again on Osservatorio Immobiliare. The "Osservatorio Turistico" then is particularly interesting since it analyses the areas and properties in areas where people normally buy a holiday home. The idea of prices is usually given by calculating the value per square meter of the property. There is a minimum and a maximum value. It also depends if a property is new and/or in excellent condition "Nuovo o ristrutturato", whether it is central and convenient to facilities and habitable "Centrale o abitabile" or if it's more isolated or far from facilities. "Periferico e abitabile". Unfortunately the information is in ½ûÂþÌìÌà only, but I think you can understand the figures. The figures are quite realistic for certain areas since it is clear that in central Milan for example a property can cost up to 8000 euros per square meter, whilst they say that in Piemonte, a rural property requiring complete renovation can start from 70000 euros. A lot of this information is used by estate agents and surveyors when appraising the value of a property, especially with regards to cities and properties used as a main residence. Some areas where UK house hunters tend to buy are not so well represented in the FIAIP statistics, but in any case it's a good reference point where to start from.

Thanks for the replies so far. I looked around at the various web sites, but as my ½ûÂþÌìÌà is minimal, I have a lot more browsing to do to see how much data is available.
For reference, whether or not anyone is interested, I will present a primer on the major types of taxes in the US and how this relates to my original question.
In the US, there is of course a federal government, which collects income taxes and Social Security taxes based on each person's income.
Then there are 50 states, most of which collect sales taxes on all retail sales, and most states have their own income tax.
Each state is divided into counties (California has 58) and they may also collect sales tax, but their main source of funds is property tax on Real Estate. The amount of tax is based on the value of the property, so there is a county official called the Assessor, whose job is to keep track of the value of every property in the county and issue the tax bills and collect the money.
All of the information that the Assessor collects is considered to be public information, so it has always been possible to go to the Assessor's office and look at the records, which includes the name of the owner(s), assessed value, square footage of the land and the buildings, amount of tax and whether it has been paid or not, maps, etc. AND actual sales price.
With the advent of the internet, counties are making a lot of this information available online. Here is a link to the Los Angeles county assessor. If you want to see a recent sale near us, enter "3141 Stanford" on the first line [URL="http://assessormap.co.la.ca.us/mapping/viewer.asp"]http://assessormap.co.la.ca.us/mapping/viewer.asp[/URL]
So in my neighborhood, when someone offers a house for sale for a given price, that doesn't mean that that is the price it actually sold for. But I can find out afterwards on the internet.
Of course, I don't expect (or want) the system in Italy to bear any resemblance to what I'm used to. If anyone cares to post a primer on taxes in Italy I for one would read it with great interest.
The point is that here in the US, the government is involved in the value of property, and the law requires the information they collect to be public. If either of those factors are not present in Italy, then the information may or may not be easily available.
So that's what I was thinking when I asked the question, a definitive and free source of information on actual home values as opposed to a salesman's hype.

Thanks for listening,
John

As you may be aware John, people don't always declare the actual price that they paid for a property to the authorities when they buy in Italy. They should but they don't, and the Notaii (the Notarys Public) who record the sale often turn a blind eye to the practice. There's a kind of chicken-and-egg situation here because the rates of tax are undoubtedly higher than they would otherwise be if people declared the full value of the sale, in order to collect the 'right' amount of tax and, of course, that discourages people from being honest.

Its difficult to be precise about real market values because unlike the UK and America, where there are many 'cookie-cutter' house designs to make comparisons easy, ½ûÂþÌìÌà properties (at least ones we foreigners like to buy) are often one-offs. Even so, you should be aiming to pay about €2,300 per square metre, plus the value of features like swimming pools, garages and 'precious' materials and subtracting value for whatever restoration costs are neccesary, at the rate of about €1,000 per square metre. (Of course, by making such a sweeping generalisation, I'm laying myself open to criticism from other Forum members who will helpfully point out that bath-plugs are less expensive in Puglia than in Marche and you really need to pay an expert thousands of Euros for his opinion etc., to which I say 'Bring it on guys!')

If you'd like an idea of purchase taxes and fees, my online calculator is here;
[url]http://www.itili.com/calculator.htm[/url]
Again, the output figures are ball-park, but better than nothing. Hope this helps and Happy Thanksgiving!

Hmmm.....
Well, that does complicate things. I saw something opposite of that here where I live when I sold a house two years ago. The buyer offered full price, but wanted me to pay $5000 for his loan fee. Thus I'd be out $5000, and the recorded house value would be MORE than he actually paid.
Thank you Marc for the link to the calculator and the buying guide above it.
So I guess the only question I have left is whether the land office has a web site, it would be interesting to see the declared values anyway. They must reflect some percentage of the value, otherwise everyone would sell their houses for one Euro, and the furniture for the rest of the compromesso price. I guess there is no hope that the compromessos are recorded anywhere?

[QUOTE=greatscott]Hmmm.....
Well, that does complicate things. I saw something opposite of that here where I live when I sold a house two years ago. The buyer offered full price, but wanted me to pay $5000 for his loan fee. Thus I'd be out $5000, and the recorded house value would be MORE than he actually paid.
Thank you Marc for the link to the calculator and the buying guide above it.
So I guess the only question I have left is whether the land office has a web site, it would be interesting to see the declared values anyway. They must reflect some percentage of the value, otherwise everyone would sell their houses for one Euro, and the furniture for the rest of the compromesso price. I guess there is no hope that the compromessos are recorded anywhere?[/QUOTE]

There has been a previous post about "declared price" where I (tried to) explain the system.
It is based on the cadastrial value - the value upon wich taxes are calculated -
Yes there's is a vary little hope to find compromessi recordered.
If you need a general idea on the purchase system in Italy, you could have a look at [url]www.notariato.it[/url]
It's the web ste of the italian notaries and it should have an english version too

Anyone can go to the Ufficio Catastale of their province and ask for an extract of the Land Registry - a Visura - which will cost about €3. You just need to have the name of the owner. or the Particelle (plot) numbers of the land. This will show the Rendita, or theoretical rental value of the property. Multiplying that by 126 will give you the value of the house, as the Land Registry sees it (not the market value) Geometras have a system for doing it online, so if you're some way from your provicial office, they may be able to help.

Unfortunately, there is very little correlation between the catastale value of the house and its market value. If a rural house was last sold back in the 50's when property values were low, then its catastale value is likely to be a tiny fraction of its market value. Newer houses are likely to be more realistically valued.

[QUOTE=greatscott]Hmmm.....
Well, that does complicate things. I saw something opposite of that here where I live when I sold a house two years ago. The buyer offered full price, but wanted me to pay $5000 for his loan fee. Thus I'd be out $5000, and the recorded house value would be MORE than he actually paid.
Thank you Marc for the link to the calculator and the buying guide above it.
So I guess the only question I have left is whether the land office has a web site, it would be interesting to see the declared values anyway. They must reflect some percentage of the value, otherwise everyone would sell their houses for one Euro, and the furniture for the rest of the compromesso price. I guess there is no hope that the compromessos are recorded anywhere?[/QUOTE]
As has been frequently pointed out in this forum declared sale/purchase prices are usually largely under declared,whether one likes it or not,with perhaps the exception of attached lands which tend to have a standard market price.Although the trend over recent years has been that of declaring a larger part of the real sale price it could still be less than 50% of the real price paid.On the other hand both buyers and sellers will generally aim at a lower price to declare to avoid further taxation .No ,as far as i'm aware ,there are no records of "compromessi" at least not "visible".Many land register offices are still today non informatic although most have started to computerize their records i guess it'll take years until the whole show is electronic so you won't get much joy out of internet.The other point is that it is essentially a sellers market.I can say that of many transactions here in the marche about which i know the owners had not one but several houses to sell and if they didn't see the sort of money they were aspiring to they didn't sell as they didn't need the money,didn't have any mortgages to pay and so had time to wait and "sit" on their properties.Nevertheless i know of many who have found properties,bought them without any horror,strange stories or other problems.Most of all this you'll see when you're over it's next to impossible to do much at a distance,good luck.

one point to take into consideration for the future is that they were planning to do a nationwidwe reappraisal of the house values.... to update them ... however it has been delayed and i think the proposal now is for a date after 2006...it was a while ago that i heard about this... and cannot remmeber the proposed year they will start.... what it will mean is that official valutaions of property will then be higher...ie you will have to pay more tax because the declared price will catch up somewhat with the market value..... i am sure someone will be able to supply the next proposed date ... and even then it will not be certain that they do it.... but it might be well something that affect those buying at the time and could be worth moving completition dates forward to avoid the higher valueation...... notaio... you most probably know if they will or will not proceed and more importantly when...

This is what I wrote in another thread:
"[I]The value of a house in Catasto is essentially a political choice.
The tax authority knows very well that the real values are much higher than those declared in the public contracts, but the fiscal policy is to don't "sqeeze" too much real estate owners and close the eyes on the real prices.
This helped purchases: about 80% of italian families are owners of the house where they live and many have a second house too.
The last (big) "check up" of the values was about 13 years ago, so may be that in the next years something will change again, increasing values and, as conseguence, taxes.![/I]

well, indeed they have already changed (a little) the cadastrial value in the last year, when it has been increased of about 10%
It is very likely that it will happen again in the future.
It seemed that this was going to happen this year, but yhe political reasons I mentioned (we have elections in April) have ereased the proposal.
In the future (I hope) will be approved a law that notaries are suggesting sice at least 15 years:
to collect the taxes for a real estate purchase only on the cadastrial value and not on the price, in order to declare real prices and paying on the fiscal value only, stopping the hypocritical system we have now.

Hello again, I have just emerged from several hours of research, and although I was severely limited by the language barrier, I did come up with a few interesting items. First is the ½ûÂþÌìÌà land office: [url]http://www.agenziaterritorio.it/[/url] I think I'll be able to find some interesting things there.
Then I found a law site: [url]http://www.bea-law.com/_lib/doc/legal_and_tax_english.pdf[/url] This document talks about how the cadastral land value is calculated based on the income production value of the land and buildings based on the size, location, use, etc. which are determined by the government. This answers my earlier question about what stops people from declaring the sale price to be ridiculously low.
Some other questions that my overactive imagination came up with are:
Is it technically illegal to declare these low sale prices? I don't want to end up in jail or with a big fine.
The compromesso is a legal document, but not normally seen by anyone in the government. If someone defaults on a purchase, and gets taken to court to have the compromesso enforced, does the compromesso price get recorded in that case?
Sorry if I seem ignorant, Dee has done most of the posts here so far, I'm a bit of a newbie.
John

[QUOTE=brendangfc]Unfortunately Alan ourproperty suffers from exactly the same problem as netsales - it shows remortgages as well as sales and shows the remortgage at the value of the remortgage not the value of the house.[/QUOTE]

I know this is an old thread - but i e-mailed 'ourproperty' - who say they only use the Land Registry - not re-mortgages. Their response was;---

"This shouldn't be the case, we do find that the Land registry sometimes make mistakes but if they do then we inform them of them.

What I can say is that I think any problems that do occur are not widespread or we would be getting more queries about them."

I've always found their information accurate.

[quote=alan haynes]I know this is an old thread - but i e-mailed 'ourproperty' - who say they only use the Land Registry - not re-mortgages. Their response was;---

"This shouldn't be the case, we do find that the Land registry sometimes make mistakes but if they do then we inform them of them.

What I can say is that I think any problems that do occur are not widespread or we would be getting more queries about them."

I've always found their information accurate.[/quote]

I'm not being funny Alan but they are spinning you a line. I contacted them 12 months ago to make them aware of the issue. they got back to me with a very similar response to the one they sent you. 12 months on and our property is still listed on their site at the re-mortgage amount. At the time we re-mortgaged the mortgage represented less than 25% of the property's value!

[FONT=Times New Roman][SIZE=3]John,[/SIZE][/FONT]

[FONT=Times New Roman][SIZE=3]As Marc says it is difficult to determine the precise market value of a property. Agencies and surveyors can give you what is called a stima comparativa a valore di mercato. This estimate is based on calculations using mathematical formulas that measure a number of variables.[/SIZE][/FONT]

[FONT=Times New Roman][SIZE=3]But I wouldn’t really call this is an exact science because the formulas don’t take other qualitative factors into account. For example, you see a property in a great location on top of a hill with 360° views on the market for x. A similar, if not better, property located in a valley will most likely be on the market for less. Moreover, a house may be valued at say €150.000 but vendors are not stupid. They are aware that once an overseas buyer spends money on the house, it will be worth considerably more and so try to hedge their bets by raising the stakes. This practice is not uncommon and when you are facing vendors who don’t really need the money, you are not going to get very far in the negotiations. It is a different matter when the vendor needs to sell.[/SIZE][/FONT]

[FONT=Times New Roman][SIZE=3]When you carry out the visure catastali e ipotecarie (land and building registry searches) you will note that immovable property is divided into numbered plots and assessed for tax. The certificato per immobile pertaining to the property you are interested in will contain certain values but these are for tax purposes only. At best you can only get a guideline indication of the fees and taxes that are due on your purchase as these are not always clear at the outset.[/SIZE][/FONT]

[FONT=Times New Roman][SIZE=3]As far as preliminary contracts (compromessi) are concerned, you can inspect copies at the Ufficio delle Entrate (Inland Revenue) only if they have been registered. Atti Pubblici and scritture private autenticate on the other hand, are filed at the Conservatoria dei Registri Immobiliari (Notary’s will have an archive of all the Atto Pubblici they have notarised but not scritture private). When inspecting an Atto di provenienza archived at the Conservatoria, the amount stipulated at the Atto Notarile will not appear on the certificate. You will have to request copies of the Atto documentation and this can cost you around €100. As a rule of thumb, you should add a minimum of 30% to 40% to whatever price is stipulated in order to get a rough estimate of what was actually paid for the property. [/SIZE][/FONT]

[FONT=Times New Roman][SIZE=3]Renovation costs vary greatly depending on what the house is like, where it is and what you want to achieve. In the Marche at the moment you can expect to pay between € 800 and € 1200 per square metre to renovate a derelict rural property to a traditional fit.[/SIZE][/FONT]

[FONT=Times New Roman][SIZE=3]As I understand it, 2006 will bring some changes to the tax laws as the government gradually attempts to reduce the level of tax evasion.[/SIZE][/FONT]