The transactions the statistics do not count

How many shops or offices change hands in Trieste each year? National statistics do not say. Not because the deeds are missing – notaries and land register offices record them as they do anywhere else – but because the Italian Revenue Agency builds its statistics on deeds registered in the property registries (conservatorie), and in the land-register municipalities deeds are entered in the land register (tavolare) instead.

A reader from Austria or South Tyrol will recognise the system as the Grundbuch, a register kept by property rather than by owner; a reader from Slovenia, as the zemljiška knjiga.

In Friuli Venezia Giulia the land-register municipalities are all those in the provinces of Trieste and Gorizia and part of those in the province of Udine. The same system applies in Trentino-Alto Adige and in some municipalities of the Veneto and Lombardy.

The “FVG” of national statistics does not include Trieste. When a national report gives a regional average quotation or a count of sales, that figure in practice describes the province of Pordenone and the part of the province of Udine outside the land register. In the Rapporto immobiliare, the average for the “provincial capitals” of Friuli Venezia Giulia is made of two capitals only: Udine and Pordenone.

What can still be read. The Observatory’s zone quotations do cover the land-register municipalities, Trieste included: you will find them on the values page. And the land register can be consulted, entry by entry, at the competent land register office: to find out which one, there is the tool “Land register or property registry?”.

• For residential property the Agency publishes regional statistics that include these municipalities; for commercial property it does not.
• Counts of listings on property portals are no substitute for deeds: they count offers, not sales, and often the same offer more than once.
• The Agency’s methodological note is reread every year: if the perimeter changes, this page changes.