Does Confindustria’s Assoimmobiliare want to scrap the houses?
What does Confindustria Assoimmobiliare's proposal relating to the creation of a replacement market consist of. Sergio Giraldo's in-depth analysis
Ambitious. The most loved adjective in Brussels emerges forcefully in Ursula von der Leyen's speech to the European Parliament on the state of the Union, held in recent days by the President of the European Commission in Strasbourg.
This is the same "ambition" that leads us to think that renovating no less than 50% of Italian real estate could stop the rise in the earth's temperature at a maximum of 1.5 degrees centigrade by 2050. A textbook non sequitur , on which, however, the Commission and the European Parliament insist on, while Giorgia Meloni's government appears uncertain to say the least on the issue.
Now, seizing the government's moment of embarrassment and the still interim phase, in Brussels, of the EPBD (Energy Performance of Buildings Directive) provision, there are those who are putting their hands forward and proposing solutions creative.
ASSOIMMOBILIARE'S PROPOSAL TO "SCRAP" THE HOUSES
In recent weeks, a proposal from Confindustria Assoimmobiliare has been circulating regarding the creation of a replacement market. What is it in practice? This is a sort of property scrapping. In practice, large property owners would sell new houses in the high energy classes (A, B, C), receiving houses and apartments in the lower energy classes in exchange. This would lead to large property management companies investing in renovations and then reselling the renovated homes. “In Europe, approximately 25-30% of homes are managed by institutional capital that offers quality homes. In Italy we are just at 5%,” Davide Albertini Petroni, president of Assoimmobiliare, declared a few days ago in an interview with MF .
Assoimmobiliare represents real estate operators and institutional investors operating in Italy, both Italian and international, and includes among its members real estate asset management companies, real estate funds, listed and unlisted real estate companies, primary banking institutions, insurance companies, public companies that manage large real estate assets, real estate services companies, legal and tax services and real estate consultancy. In short, it is finance applied to real estate.
According to Albertini Petroni, the exchange mechanism, which now has a registration tax of 9%, should be facilitated by providing state incentives and support. A public-private partnership would be needed, "a systemic operation involving the government, banks and the real estate sector", concludes Albertini Petroni.
DOUBTS ABOUT THE PROPOSAL
The proposal leaves many questions and doubts open. The first reservation is on the fact that a similar mechanism, as soon as it were inaugurated, would cause the value of the houses to be exchanged to plummet and increase that of the houses in the highest energy classes, with an immediate realization of the loss upon exchange.
The second doubt is about the role of the State. In this integrated and highly competitive single market that the European Union would like to be, in this self-proclaimed paradise of competition, apparently all that is done is calling for state intervention. Perhaps, then, it would be appropriate to explicitly say that in the European Union the State serves no other purpose than to continually absorb the market inefficiencies generated by crazy and suicidal European policies. Policies implemented, moreover, by a handful of officials who do not respond politically to anyone of what they do and pass the costs onto the citizens, who have no defense whatsoever.
The third doubt concerns the concrete feasibility of this proposal and its social effects. Who today lives in an old house in the city center, certainly not energy efficient, should move where, to have a "compliant" house? Where are the class A homes? Do we need to build new ones? And where?
WHAT IS HOME FOR ITALIANS
Italy is certainly different from the rest of Europe. The fact that, as Alberto Petroni correctly reports, in our country only 5% of real estate assets is in the hands of institutional capital, has an explanation and a cultural significance.
The house is part of the much emphasized concept of Made in Italy, it is the basis of Italian know-how and know-how. The concept of home is part of the culture of good Italian living, even before its concrete construction. In Italy three-quarters of houses are owned by those who live in them. In Italian culture, home is family, it is work, it is growth, it is stability and Italians who live abroad know very well how different the Italian culture of home is.
The idea of uprooting people from their homes to place themselves in the hands of real estate finance may also seem like a good thing to many. But the question is linked to the basic idea that everything is a commodity, even the house, and that the commodity must change ownership to create wealth. The wave of progress demands a man without roots, fickle, a container without history and without identity, to be filled with "new" concepts as needed (green). Perhaps we need to ask ourselves whether our identity, as people, is worth more or less than a class A apartment in the suburbs.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/economia/casa-italia-assoimmobiliare/ on Fri, 06 Oct 2023 09:01:50 +0000.