Investment in Italy, source by source

How much was invested in Italian commercial property, and at what yields? The figures in circulation come from a handful of consultancies, each with its own method, and they rarely agree. Read one and you think you have the number; set them side by side and you see that no single figure holds for everyone.

So we set them side by side: for each item, how many sources publish it, the lowest and the highest value, and the values source by source, each linked to its document. The firms are cited as publishers of public reports, by name, next to their figures.

Each firm counts in its own way. Some include conversions from one use to another, others keep them apart; some count a portfolio as one deal, others split it by sector; some revise the previous year’s data, others do not. The spread between lowest and highest measures that difference of perimeter, not an error.

Prime yields are net and refer to the highest-grade buildings in each segment, in the most liquid cities. They are not the yield of an ordinary property, and they cannot be compared with the gross yield estimated from OMI quotations: they are two different measures.

The chart shows, for each year, a bar from the lowest to the highest value published for total investment.

For an owner or a buyer in Friuli Venezia Giulia these national figures are a backdrop. They show the direction of the Italian market and the yields at which institutional capital buys the highest-grade buildings in the largest cities; they do not say what a building in Udine or Trieste will fetch.

• Friuli Venezia Giulia barely appears in the national reports: regional volumes are not published.
• Some sources can be read only in press releases reported by others; where the original document was not accessible, the source line says so.
• Figures for the current half-year get revised: this page is updated in January and in July.