The real estate sector it is confirmed resilient and closes the stock market week between light and shadow, making better in the rest of Europe. Still positive data on home sales continue to maintain a positive sentiment on this sector of the market, which still offers interesting ideas.
The central bank effect
Central banks remain in the foreground, as an expansionary policy favors the mortgage market and therefore also the real estate sector. Bank of England announced Thursday the first rate cut in two years, bringing the 5% benchmark interest rate (25 basis points less).
There Bank of Japan has instead raised interest rates, ending the era of zero/negative rates and bringing the reference rate at 0.25%. A decision that does not imply a restrictive policy, but confirms an accommodating approach to Japanese monetary policy.
And we come to the Fed which, despite having confirmed an unchanged policy, has strengthened expectations of a cut in Septemberwhile the ECB in the monthly bulletin she didn’t stick her neck out and warned that risks to economic growth are tilted to the downside and inflation could turn out to be higher than expected.
More good signs from US real estate
The real estate market, meanwhile, continues to signal a recovery. In the United States, the FHFA home price index has highlighted a relative stability compared to the expected 0.2%. The result was better than expected the S&P Case-Shiller indexwhich highlighted a 6.8% year-on-year increase compared to +7.3% in the previous month and above the +6.5% consensus. Also in the USA, the sales compromises (pending home sale) have recorded a 4.8% increase on a monthly basis versus the -1.9% recorded in May and the +1.4% expected by analysts.
The market is doing well United Kingdomwhere the price growth of homes according to Nationwide has accelerated at 0.3% from the previous 0.2%, exceeding the consensus (0.1%).
A Istat report on the occupied housing market, however, it highlights a a stagnant market with almost one in three homes not being occupied. The data updated to 2021 speak of 9,581,772 habitable buildings without a permanent occupant, out of a total of 35,271,829, although it should be noted that a dwelling with a non-resident renting it is also considered “unoccupied”. The highest percentages of unoccupied homes are concentrated in Southern Italy (26.8%) followed by the North-West (26.3%).
Stock market performance is better in EU
The real estate sector had a good week at European level, where Stoxx 600 Real Estate Index reported a +2.8% on a weekly basis.
A more cautious performance was achieved by Italy, where FTSE Italia All Share Real Estate Index showed an increase of around 0.77%, doing worse than the FTSE MIB index which gained 5.3%.
Who goes up and who goes down
Among the real estate companies listed on Pizza Affari, the collapse of Restorationwhich left about 28% on the floor, giving up 10% in the last session alone: the company active in the real estate sector closed the first half of the year with a consolidated net loss of 25 million euros, compared to the positive net result of 18.7 million euros in the previous year, which benefited from the positive effects of the Project Starfighter operation (30 million euros) and had also allowed, among other things, to extinguish the debt towards the banking system as of 30 June 2023.
Down too Brioschi (-5.3%) and Cabinets (-2.5%), the latter after the accounts, which showed operating revenues of 53 million euros (-12%) of a Net Result is negative for 1 million euros.
It’s only good IDG (+4.5%), after announcing an improvement in the net result, which shows an accounting loss of 32.5 million euros, 30.8% less than the 47.1 million in June 2023.
