Living in Milan is impossible

Off the podium. A very nice podium. Milan is the fourth city in Europe for the price of an apartment, considered a two-room apartment, for rent. In fact, in the Lombard capital, the monthly rent for a two-room apartment reaches 1,853 euros per month, studio apartments are close to 1,280 and 725 euros for private rooms.

In the fourth quarter of 2022, houses in Europe cost more only in Amsterdam, first in the ranking, Reykjavík and Lisbon. The city of the Madonnina thus also beats Munich, Paris, Rome and Berlin. The data comes from the report of “HousingAnywhere”, the international accommodation platform for students and young professionals which in the past few hours presented the results of its “International Rent Index”, which takes into consideration 23 European cities.

From the numbers, reads a note, “an unstoppable upward trend emerges in rents in all types of properties. With increases of 14.3% on an annual basis – in particular, an increase of 18.3% for studio apartments , 13.1% for private rooms and 11.4% for two-room apartments – the imbalance between supply and demand has worsened again in the last year, while inflation in Europe has reached a record rate of 9, 3%”.

“The real estate market is not keeping pace with an increasingly mobile world,” commented Djordy Seelmann, CEO of HousingAnywhere. “Rental prices are rising faster than inflation: students and young professionals shelve their dreams because there is no housing available in the cities where they want to study.” In practice, to paraphrase, it almost seems that living in Milan is impossible. “All of this may look worse for the younger generation, but we are convinced that once governments and municipalities recognize the role of affordable housing and shared responsibility, we can take an important step forward in enabling people,” he concluded. – to live how they want and where they want”.

Milan record

And the fourth place in all of Europe is not the only confirmation of how expensive Milan has become. Already in the past few hours, in fact, the capital had “celebrated” another milestone, confirming itself as the queen of rentals also in 2022, the year in which it reached a record ‘historical’. In the city, as certified by a report by Idealista, last December the price of rental properties reached the figure of 21 euros per square metre.

Between November and December 2022, the study underlines, rents in the province of Milan grew by 0.6%, by 1.4% if only the city is considered, while compared with those of September 2002, by +2.4%. In one year, then, between December 2021 and December 2022, the growth was equal to + 8.4%, + 11.2% in the city. The Lombard capital, writes the platform with the announcements of properties for sale or lease, also in 2022 confirms its leadership in rental prices, with 21 euros per square metre, reaching an all-time high since the idealist index was introduced.

“In 2022 – remarked Vincenzo De Tommaso, head of the Idealista research office – the imbalance between supply and demand in the residential rental sector worsened. Lack of available housing stock and inflation have pushed prices skyrocketing, with double-digit increases in many major markets such as Milan, Bologna, Florence, Genoa and Turin”. Overall, 2023 promises to be a difficult year for the real estate market in Italy , also thanks to the increasingly high interest rates which lead many young people to hesitate with the purchase of a house and to continue to rent”.