The Le Marche Property Market 2009.
At his time of the year, so near to Christmas, I always like to look back and review how I feel that the property market in Le Marche and indeed the whole of Italy has behaved in the past twelve months and what if any trends seem to be showing up for the coming year in 2010.
Initially after the panic and fallout of the banking crisis in late 2008 and early 2009 I had thought that this year would be a time of falling house prices and also that there would be a scarcity of enquiries and client visits, but this has not proved to be the case, at least not in the Le Marche region of Italy!
This autumn as also proved to an extremely busy time for client visits, the best in fact for several years and this shows no sign of slowing down well into the New Year.
The beginning of the year was in fact quite buoyant and it was not until early spring that enquiries started to taper off and confirmed visits became more scarce. I then thought that because of the credit crunch in the UK and indeed also in much of the world that the market might then stay quiet throughout the rest of the year, but again I was happy to be proved wrong.
Enquiries and visits held up during the late spring and early summer, but were less than in earlier years, but since August the market has been as busy, indeed in some cases much more busy than in the previous two years. I do believe some of this demand is due to clients tiring of waiting to see the economy improving and deciding that whatever happens, it is still a good time to buy a property in Italy.
Prices of properties in regions of Italy such as Tuscany and Umbria have fallen as vendors have adjusted their prices to reflect the changed economic situation in the world and also the strength of the Euro against Sterling in the past eighteen months.
In Le Marche many vendors are still holding out for unrealistic prices on their properties and I believe that this has stopped many would be sales to eager and willing foreign buyers who are still in the market.
I believe that the main reason for this is that the property market in Le Marche is still quite undeveloped compared to other parts of Italy, especially areas such as Tuscany and Umbria and vendors in Le Marche still have not realised the influence that outside events will have both on both the number of sales and on house prices in the region. Many Italian estate agents in Le Marche do not normally give advice to their clients regarding the correct asking price for a property and often leave it up to a vendor to decide the market price, and in most cases this tends to be on the high side.
In fact the foreign property market in Le Marche really only took off once Ryanair started flying into Ancona and then Pescara just ten years ago. Before then most foreign buyers came from northern Europe, especially Germany and Holland and the market was quite limited in size.
The market for UK buyers in Le Marche only really started becoming busy about six or seven years ago and prices started to rise rapidly about four or five years ago. A ruined farmhouse with some land which would have cost 30-40,000 euros in 2000 would be on the market 2008 at over 120,000 euros and properties with great views would have increased even more. You can check the prices here at ou estate agent in Le Marche's property development page
Because of this many agencies have sprung up over the past four or five years to take advantage of the increase in demand and prices, but now that the market has cooled some of these agencies have disappeared or others have had to cut back drastically on their staffing and offices. This is also true of agencies that catered solely for the Italian market in coastal apartments, many large developments on the coast remain unsold or have had their asking prices reduced drastically.
But unfortunately I feel that the world financial problems are far from over, and so I am still very cautious about the outlook for next year. I am not as optimistic as many other observers of the market, but even so I do still feel that the relatively low property prices in Le Marche do allow buyers to still secure bargains and very beautiful properties at that. However if the economies of the UK and Europe do improve, then I feel that the property market in Italy should slowly pickup again and Le Marche will once again prove very popular with foreign buyers.
