Measuring the commercial property prices in Italy:a first evidence from a transaction based approach

After reviewing the main features of the commercial property market in Italy and the main sources of statistics about cyclical developments in its single sectors, we provide a first indicator of the commercial property prices based on a transaction approach. In particular we integrate several pieces of evidence on prices actually paid to transfer property of different commercial properties in order to obtain a quarterly indicator covering the period since 1995Q1. In a preliminary validation exercise, we put forward a basic analysis of the cyclical patterns of our indicator compared with developments observed in Italy in both the residential property market and in the general economy.