Italy

Italy’s housing market in 2025 is stable with rising prices and increased transaction volumes, supported by falling interest rates and growing demand, especially in larger cities. Home ownership remains dominant: about 76% of Italian households own their residence, while roughly 24% rent. The latest figures show the average purchase price is around €2,104 per square meter nationwide, with top urban areas like Rome reaching approximately €3,124 per sqm. Renting costs have risen sharply: the national median is about €14.22 per sqm per month, but major cities like Milan, Rome, and Naples can see rental effort rates as high as 38% of household income.

Publicly owned housing, managed by municipalities and former public housing agencies, accounts for approximately 5.5% of the national housing stock. Its purpose is to serve low-income households, yet its volume remains limited compared to overall housing supply. Social housing in Italy is broader than traditional public housing; it includes mixed public-private funded initiatives aiming to help those unable to access either market-rate or fully public housing, often, but not always, targeting permanent tenancy and moderate incomes. Thus, while public housing is part of social housing, many projects under “social housing” use private land or partnerships and support various income groups, making the two concepts related but not identical in practice, especially in cities.

Italy’s housing crisis is marked by severe affordability challenges, especially in renting. In 2025, tenants in major cities like Milan, Rome, Naples, Venice, and Florence spend between 35% and 38% of their income on rent, while provinces such as Belluno and Aosta see ratios as high as 60% and 52%. The national average rent-to-income ratio exceeds 31%, and in cities such as Massa, the rate reaches 57%. Over the past five years, the typical share of income devoted to rent rose from just under 32% to above 35%, highlighting growing financial pressures. Although buying with a mortgage has become marginally easier, the effort rate for purchasers in top urban centers still ranges from 26% to 35% of household income. The crisis disproportionately affects low- and moderate-income households, youth, single-earner families, and many urban dwellers who struggle with the inadequate supply of affordable rental and public housing. Regions with robust economic growth and inflows of investment, especially in the north, see faster price escalation, amplifying disparities between regions. The combined result is a class of residents—especially in metropolitan areas—who are at rising risk of financial strain or exclusion from secure housing.

Italy’s national government addresses affordable and sustainable housing through several targeted programs and recent policy reforms. The central strategy is the Casa Italia Plan, introduced in 2025, which aims for long-term public and social housing expansion and modernization, managed by the Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport with regional and local partners.

Recent communicated targets include renewing support funds for tenants at risk of eviction (allocating 30 million euros in 2025), increasing the availability of rental apartments through regulatory changes that legalize previously excluded homes, and accelerating both public and private residential construction with streamlined permits.

Key activities include:

• The “Casa a un euro” (1 Euro House) scheme, empowering rural revitalization by offering abandoned properties to buyers committed to renovation and permanent residence.
• Grants up to 100,000 euros in regions like Trentino for families who refurbish and settle in depopulated mountain villages.
• Concessional loans and fiscal incentives for first-time buyers and young couples, including the refinancing of a national fund that has already backed over 500,000 mortgages.
• The National Plan for Public and Social Housing and the “National Innovative Programme for the Quality of Living” (about 3 billion euros for 159 projects), focused on sustainable, energy-efficient housing, urban regeneration, and expanding affordable supply.
• Regulatory reforms allow faster approvals for urban redevelopment and foster public-private partnerships in social housing.

Overall, the government’s multi-pronged approach combines funding, incentives, regulatory reforms, and partnership models to promote more affordable, sustainable housing across Italy.

Housing cooperatives in Italy play a minor but distinct role in the national housing landscape. While Italy has a notable cooperative sector, only a very small percentage of the country’s overall housing stock is managed by housing cooperatives—estimates suggest their share is only a fraction of one percent of total residential units, especially compared to the millions of dwellings owned directly by households and the limited stock of public/social housing.

Worker and social cooperatives are numerous and relevant in welfare services and some community-based housing initiatives, but housing-specific cooperatives remain relatively few and have limited direct impact. The sector is characterized by regional variation, historically more active in northern regions, and is evolving through partnerships with municipalities or the private sector, with models sometimes blending social housing and cooperative principles.

Recent years have seen increased policy attention to innovative housing forms, including cooperative and collaborative models, largely as part of broader urban regeneration and social housing policies. However, no major national policy directly mandates a significant expansion of traditional housing cooperatives. National programs such as the “National Innovative Programme for the Quality of Living” and the Casa Italia Plan focus on expanding affordable and social housing more broadly, including support for collaborative housing models through partnerships and urban renewal, but cooperative housing remains a niche segment rather than a core pillar of national housing policy.