The stock market week offered various ideas for the Italian real estate sectorwhere the performances of IGD – Immobiliare Grande Distribuzione SIIQ and Abitare In stood out, while on the macroeconomic front there were few relevant indications, due to a calendar without major appointments. Finally, market research published in recent days has offered optimistic indications for different market segments.
Real estate stocks on Borsa Italiana
Both IGD – Immobiliare Grande Distribuzione SIIQ and AbitareIn closed the stock market week with increases greater than 8%albeit for different reasons.
The first company – IGD – one of the most important in Italy for the management of shopping centres, has benefited from the publication of the strategic guidelines of the 2025-2027 Industrial Plan; these will be: increasing the profitability of the portfolio by leveraging innovation; generating further value with the Third Party Services Business Unit, proposing itself as a reference operator on the retail market; investing to keep assets modern and attractive, improving their environmental sustainability and technological and digital profile; improving the management of financial deadlines and making them more consistent with cash flows, consolidating the capital structure also through a targeted plan of disposals and asset rotation; returning to distributing the dividend.
LivingIna Milanese company leader in residential development, was instead pushed up on the stock exchange in Friday’s session by press rumours about possible extraordinary operations by Aermont Capitalin agreement with the founding members Luigi Gozzini and Marco Grillo (who hold a stake in the capital of Abitare In of 22.62% and 17.81% respectively). However, the company has communicated that it has not received any offers or expressions of interest of any kind from the aforementioned operator and that no negotiations of any kind are currently underway, nor have any mandates for potential extraordinary transactions been granted by the company and/or the founding members.
A few ideas on the other titleswith Risanamento gaining 4.3% in the last week, Gabetti 2%, Next Re 0.7%, while Aedes lost 3.9% and Brioschi 4.2%.
The macroeconomic data released
On the macroeconomic front, the week started with an indication from United Kingdomwhere is the Nationwide Housing Price Index (which measures the change in the sale price of homes with mortgages backed by Nationwide) showed that house prices rose 1.5% in June compared to a year ago (leaving prices about 3% below the all-time high seen in the summer of 2022). “Housing market activity has been largely flat over the past year, with the total number of transactions down about 15% from 2019 levels,” said Robert Gardner, Nationwide’s chief economist. “Mortgage transactions have fallen even more (nearly 25%), reflecting the impact of higher borrowing costs. In contrast, cash transaction volume is actually about 5% above pre-pandemic levels.”
On Wednesday, another weekly decline emerged for the mortgage applications in the United States. In the week ended June 28, the index measuring the volume of mortgage applications fell 2.6%, after gaining 0.8% the week before; the index measuring refinance applications fell 1.5%, while the index measuring new applications fell 3.3%, the Mortgage Bankers Associations (MBA) said, indicating that 30-year mortgage rates rose to 7.03% from 6.93% the week before.
Market research
The first months of 2024 describe a positive scenario for the business properties. The sales analyzed by the Research Office Tecnocasa Group are increasing in all sectors except for warehouses which are slightly down. Real estate for production use has shown the strongest increase with +15.7%: companies buy the warehouse if possible. Prices, which are leaving behind years of decline, are still convenient and this pushes people to buy. These are solid companies that, in the majority of cases, use their own liquidity. Next are offices whose trading has increased by 11%. The novelty of these first months of 2024 is represented precisely by this type of real estate which, after a period of suffering caused by the strong use of smart working, are now recovering ground and are once again attractive. Shops also closed the quarter with an increase of 6.5%.
The first half of 2024 closes with an investment volume in commercial real estate Italian equal to 3.1 billion euros, a clear recovery compared to the same period of the previous year (+33% compared to the first half of 2023), a figure that reflects a recovery in investment activities already underway, according to CBREa global leader in commercial real estate services and investments. Growth strengthened in the second quarter of 2024, which saw an even stronger increase in investment volumes of €1.8 billion, +42% compared to the same period last year. In the second quarter of 2024, the asset class that recorded the highest investment volumes was Hotels, with over €690 million invested (+240% compared to the same period in 2023), for a total of almost €1 billion since the beginning of the year (+92% compared to last year).
Real Estate Scenarios has instead published the data on hotel real estate market in 2023. Looking at Italy, there has been a contraction in the hotel sector’s real estate turnover, which went from 3.5 billion euros in 2022 to three billion euros in 2023, with a decrease of approximately 14%. However, experts note, the performances shown by investments and real estate turnover in 2023 can be considered positive if analyzed in the geopolitical, economic and social context in which they matured, despite distancing the Italian hotel sector from the levels reached in 2019 (3.4 billion euros of allocated capital and 3.5 billion euros of turnover).
