Ask someone to picture a foreign buyer shopping for a home in Italy, and the image that comes to mind is usually a stone farmhouse in Tuscany or a glass of wine on a terrace above Lake Como. New data released this month confirms there is truth to that picture, but the fuller map turns out to be wider and more interesting than the postcard version. Buyer enquiries tracked across the country this year show Americans still leading the field, representing more than one in five requests. Right behind them are British buyers at fourteen percent and German buyers at close to ten percent, a reminder that Italy's pull reaches well beyond the United States.
Beyond the Obvious Postcards
Tuscany remains the single most requested region, which will surprise no one who has watched the light fall over its hills in September. What is more telling is what comes next. Sicily now ranks second among regions for foreign interest, with Lombardy close behind, carried in part by the province of Como, which tops the provincial rankings ahead of Lucca and Perugia. Individually, no single town draws more enquiries than Ostuni in Puglia, the whitewashed hill town that has quietly become one of the country's most asked about addresses. Mountain destinations hold an outsized share of the priciest listings too, in places like Cortina d'Ampezzo and Courmayeur, partly because strict limits on new construction keep supply tight there. Livigno is perhaps the clearest example of what a single event can do to a market: prices there have roughly doubled since the town was chosen to host Olympic events.
Budgets tell their own story, and it is a grounded one. The average prospective buyer has about four hundred fifty thousand euros to work with, and a meaningful forty four percent are planning to spend less than one hundred thousand. Most are not chasing a castle. They want a renovated, independent apartment of around one hundred twenty square meters or more, somewhere they can actually live in or rent out. That is a very different buyer than the one usually imagined when "Italian property boom" makes headlines, and it is exactly the kind of grounded, specific brief we are used to working from at ItalianExperience, where our estates practice spends as much time on due diligence, zoning and realistic pricing as it does on finding the view.
A Market Finding Its Balance
The broader national picture, compiled by the research group Nomisma across Italy's thirteen largest cities, points to a market settling into a steadier rhythm rather than surging. Transactions are expected to rise a modest zero point three percent in 2026 after a stronger first quarter, with prices up about one point eight percent on existing homes and one point four percent on new builds through the first half of the year. Rents climbed three point three percent over the same period, and the number of renting households has grown by roughly twelve percent over five years. The more interesting shift is which cities are leading that growth. Milan, long the engine of Italy's property story, is cooling, with rents there actually easing back. Rome has overtaken it, outpacing the national average on both prices and rents, and mid sized cities like Turin, Padua, Bari and Cagliari are now posting some of the strongest rental growth in the country.
None of this points to a market losing momentum. It points to one that is spreading out, rewarding buyers and advisors willing to look past the three or four cities that usually get all the attention. That is the work we do every day for clients weighing where in Italy actually matches what they are looking for, whether that is a lakeside apartment, a renovated home in a province most visitors have never heard of, or a foothold in a city that is only now starting to show up in the data.
Data referenced from Idealista's report on Italy's holiday home buyers and the Nomisma housing market outlook as covered by Il Sole 24 Ore.
The best Italian property story this year is not the one everyone already knows.