{"slug":"house-or-apartment-italy-price","title":"Dreaming of a house in Italy? An apartment might change what you can afford","deck":"A garden and a little privacy sound wonderful. But in some Italian towns, choosing a house instead of an apartment can change your budget considerably. Here's what the latest official prices show.","author":"Caitlin","published":"2026-11-01","updated":"2026-11-01","status":"published","topics":["costs-housing","places"],"url":"https://www.expatliving.it/articles/house-or-apartment-italy-price?utm_source=ai-api&utm_medium=referral","markdownUrl":"https://www.expatliving.it/articles/house-or-apartment-italy-price.md?utm_source=ai-api&utm_medium=referral","places":[{"grain":"comune","code":"007022","name":"Courmayeur","url":"https://www.expatliving.it/data/comune/courmayeur?utm_source=ai-api&utm_medium=referral"},{"grain":"comune","code":"025016","name":"Cortina d'Ampezzo","url":"https://www.expatliving.it/data/comune/cortina-d-ampezzo?utm_source=ai-api&utm_medium=referral"},{"grain":"comune","code":"055023","name":"Orvieto","url":"https://www.expatliving.it/data/comune/orvieto?utm_source=ai-api&utm_medium=referral"},{"grain":"comune","code":"050039","name":"Volterra","url":"https://www.expatliving.it/data/comune/volterra?utm_source=ai-api&utm_medium=referral"},{"grain":"comune","code":"054052","name":"Todi","url":"https://www.expatliving.it/data/comune/todi?utm_source=ai-api&utm_medium=referral"},{"grain":"comune","code":"093004","name":"Aviano","url":"https://www.expatliving.it/data/comune/aviano?utm_source=ai-api&utm_medium=referral"},{"grain":"comune","code":"075035","name":"Lecce","url":"https://www.expatliving.it/data/comune/lecce?utm_source=ai-api&utm_medium=referral"},{"grain":"comune","code":"048017","name":"Firenze","url":"https://www.expatliving.it/data/comune/firenze?utm_source=ai-api&utm_medium=referral"},{"grain":"comune","code":"054051","name":"Spoleto","url":"https://www.expatliving.it/data/comune/spoleto?utm_source=ai-api&utm_medium=referral"},{"grain":"comune","code":"089013","name":"Noto","url":"https://www.expatliving.it/data/comune/noto?utm_source=ai-api&utm_medium=referral"},{"grain":"comune","code":"046017","name":"Lucca","url":"https://www.expatliving.it/data/comune/lucca?utm_source=ai-api&utm_medium=referral"},{"grain":"comune","code":"074012","name":"Ostuni","url":"https://www.expatliving.it/data/comune/ostuni?utm_source=ai-api&utm_medium=referral"},{"grain":"comune","code":"051017","name":"Cortona","url":"https://www.expatliving.it/data/comune/cortona?utm_source=ai-api&utm_medium=referral"},{"grain":"comune","code":"052015","name":"Montepulciano","url":"https://www.expatliving.it/data/comune/montepulciano?utm_source=ai-api&utm_medium=referral"}],"datasets":[{"title":"House or apartment: which costs more per square metre","url":"https://www.expatliving.it/data/map/italy/omi-house-premium-comune?utm_source=ai-api&utm_medium=referral","slug":"omi-house-premium-comune-2025h2","coverage":"Micro-zone within comune · 7,587 comuni priced"},{"title":"Detached houses, not apartments: Ville e Villini prices","url":"https://www.expatliving.it/data/map/italy/omi-house-purchase-comune?utm_source=ai-api&utm_medium=referral","slug":"omi-house-purchase-comune-2025h2","coverage":"Micro-zone within comune · 7,587 comuni priced"},{"title":"Map layer — Premium for refurbished housing, by comune","url":"https://www.expatliving.it/data/map/italy/omi-refurbished-premium-comune?utm_source=ai-api&utm_medium=referral","slug":"omi-refurbished-premium-comune-2025h2","coverage":"Micro-zone within comune · 7,587 comuni priced"},{"title":"Map layer — Property purchase price, by comune","url":"https://www.expatliving.it/data/map/italy/omi-purchase-comune?utm_source=ai-api&utm_medium=referral","slug":"omi-purchase-comune-2025h2","coverage":"Micro-zone within comune · 7,587 comuni priced"},{"title":"Browse residential prices, by province","url":"https://www.expatliving.it/data/omi?utm_source=ai-api&utm_medium=referral","vintage":"2025H2","coverage":"Micro-zone within comune · 7,587 comuni priced"}],"body":"Many Americans picture their Italian life in a house: a few rooms, a terrace or a small garden, perhaps an olive tree.\n\nMany Italians, including many in small towns, live in apartments. In a historic center, the beautiful building you admire from the piazza is very often divided into flats, and a detached house usually means something on the edge of town or in the countryside.\n\nSo when readers ask what a home in Italy costs, I think the honest answer starts with another question: **what kind of home?**\n\n## Why the type of home you choose changes the price\n\nThe Agenzia delle Entrate, Italy's tax agency, publishes property prices twice a year through its *Osservatorio del Mercato Immobiliare*, known as OMI. Until recently, we showed only one of its categories on our site: *abitazioni civili*, ordinary homes in normal condition, which in practice means mostly apartments.\n\nWe have now added a second: *ville e villini*, detached houses and villas. OMI gives a price for them in 6,333 Italian comuni, and you can see them all on our [map of detached-house prices](https://www.expatliving.it/data/map/italy/omi-house-purchase-comune).\n\nTo compare the two fairly, we pair them inside the same OMI zone, a small area of a town with similar prices, and then average across the town. That gives a single number for each town: how much more, or less, a house costs per square meter than an apartment in the same part of town. We can calculate it for 6,064 comuni, on our [house-or-apartment map](https://www.expatliving.it/data/map/italy/omi-house-premium-comune).\n\n## How much more would a house cost in the towns you love?\n\nThat is probably what most of us would expect. A detached house usually comes with land, privacy and more space around it, and buyers pay for that.\n\nWhat surprised me is how much the gap varies. These are fourteen towns many readers will know.\n\n**Houses and apartments in fourteen Italian towns**\n\n| Town                                                                          | Region                | Apartment, per m² | House, per m² | House vs apartment, same zone |\n| ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- | --------------------- | ----------------- | ------------- | ----------------------------- |\n| [Courmayeur](https://www.expatliving.it/data/comune/courmayeur)               | Valle d'Aosta         | €6,200            | €5,810        | 5.5% less                     |\n| [Cortina d'Ampezzo](https://www.expatliving.it/data/comune/cortina-d-ampezzo) | Veneto                | €9,513            | €8,150        | 1% less                       |\n| [Orvieto](https://www.expatliving.it/data/comune/orvieto)                     | Umbria                | €1,250            | €1,100        | 7% more                       |\n| [Volterra](https://www.expatliving.it/data/comune/volterra)                   | Tuscany               | €1,403            | €1,425        | 7% more                       |\n| [Todi](https://www.expatliving.it/data/comune/todi)                           | Umbria                | €893              | €942          | 13.5% more                    |\n| [Aviano](https://www.expatliving.it/data/comune/aviano)                       | Friuli-Venezia Giulia | €900              | €1,027        | 15% more                      |\n| [Lecce](https://www.expatliving.it/data/comune/lecce)                         | Puglia                | €1,097            | €1,213        | 16% more                      |\n| [Florence](https://www.expatliving.it/data/comune/firenze)                    | Tuscany               | €3,003            | €3,490        | 18% more                      |\n| [Spoleto](https://www.expatliving.it/data/comune/spoleto)                     | Umbria                | €995              | €1,083        | 19% more                      |\n| [Noto](https://www.expatliving.it/data/comune/noto)                           | Sicily                | €868              | €1,024        | 20.5% more                    |\n| [Lucca](https://www.expatliving.it/data/comune/lucca)                         | Tuscany               | €1,723            | €1,875        | 24% more                      |\n| [Ostuni](https://www.expatliving.it/data/comune/ostuni)                       | Puglia                | €1,468            | €1,913        | 28% more                      |\n| [Cortona](https://www.expatliving.it/data/comune/cortona)                     | Tuscany               | €1,540            | €1,970        | 33% more                      |\n| [Montepulciano](https://www.expatliving.it/data/comune/montepulciano)         | Tuscany               | €1,047            | €1,150        | 35% more                      |\n\n*Agenzia delle Entrate, OMI, second half of 2025, homes in normal condition. Apartment: abitazioni civili, averaged across the town's OMI zones. House: ville e villini, averaged the same way. House vs apartment: the two prices compared inside the same OMI zone, then averaged across the town, so it does not equal the ratio of the two columns.*\n\nIn Orvieto and Volterra, a house costs about 7% more per square meter than an apartment in the same zone. In Cortona and Montepulciano, both in southern Tuscany, it costs about a third more.\n\nOstuni, in Puglia, sits near the top as well, at about 28%. I suspect that reflects demand for country houses and restored farmhouses in and around the Valle d'Itria, but our data cannot say that directly.\n\n## Why a house outside town can look cheaper than an apartment in the center\n\nMontepulciano shows why we compare houses and apartments inside the same zone.\n\nIf you look only at the town averages, a house in Montepulciano costs about €1,150 per square meter and an apartment about €1,047, a difference of about 10%. But inside the same zone, a house costs about 35% more.\n\nThe likely explanation is location. Most detached houses in a town like Montepulciano sit outside the historic center, in zones where everything costs less, while apartments cluster in the center, where everything costs more. Averaged across the whole town, the two effects partly cancel out. Compared zone by zone, the real premium for a house becomes visible.\n\nSo if you are comparing a house in the countryside with an apartment in the center, the town averages may be the more useful figure. If you are deciding between the two in the same neighborhood, the zone comparison is.\n\n## Surprisingly, a house is sometimes cheaper per square meter\n\nIn 450 of the 6,064 comuni we can compare, a detached house costs less per square meter than an apartment in the same zone. That is about 7% of them.\n\nTwo of the clearest examples in our table are Alpine resorts. In Courmayeur, a house costs about 5.5% less per square meter than an apartment in the same zone, and in Cortina d'Ampezzo about 1% less. In towns like these, I would guess that small apartments close to the lifts and the center are in particularly high demand, but again, the data can only show the price, not the reason.\n\nIt is worth remembering that a lower price per square meter does not mean a lower price. Houses tend to be larger, so the total can still be much higher.\n\n## Would paying more for a renovated home save you trouble later?\n\nOMI also distinguishes homes by condition. We now show the premium for homes in *ottimo* (excellent) condition over homes in normal condition, in the 2,131 comuni where OMI records both, on our [map of the premium for renovated homes](https://www.expatliving.it/data/map/italy/omi-refurbished-premium-comune).\n\nAmong the towns above, Cortona has the largest premium we can measure: a home in excellent condition costs about 44% more per square meter than one in normal condition. In Lecce the premium is about 23%. In the mountain resorts we looked at, it ranges from about 23% in Livigno to about 33% in Canazei.\n\nThat premium is a market price gap, not the cost of renovating. It tells you what buyers pay for a home that is already done. Whether it would cost you more or less to renovate a home yourself depends on the house, the builder and a great deal of patience.\n\n## What I'd consider before choosing a house or an apartment\n\nIf you're weighing the two, I recommend thinking about a few practical questions alongside the price.\n\n**How much space do you actually need?** A house may cost more per square meter and also have more square meters. It is worth comparing the total price for the space you would use, not only the price per square meter.\n\n**Who looks after the outside?** An apartment usually comes with a building administrator and shared costs for the roof, the stairs and the facade. A house means those are yours, along with the garden, the gate and, in the countryside, sometimes the road.\n\n**How far would you be from daily life?** A detached house on the edge of town may be quiet and lovely. It may also mean driving your car for bread, the pharmacy and the doctor, which is worth thinking about for the years ahead as well as the first one.\n\n**Would you renovate, or buy something already done?** In towns with a large premium for homes in excellent condition, a home that needs work can look like a bargain. It is worth getting a builder's estimate before treating it as one.\n\n## What these prices can't tell you about a particular home\n\n**OMI prices are averages, not valuations.** They come from the agency's records of real transactions and describe ranges within each zone. They tend to run below the asking prices you see in listings, especially for properties marketed to foreign buyers.\n\n**Not every town has every figure.** Many small towns have no OMI price for detached houses, and only about a quarter of Italian towns have a price for homes in excellent condition. Where a figure is missing, we leave the town off the map rather than guess.\n\n**A town average covers very different homes.** A restored farmhouse with a pool and a village house with no garden can both count as *ville e villini*. The averages tell you about the market, not about any particular property.\n\n## Where the prices come from\n\nAll prices come from the Agenzia delle Entrate's OMI for the second half of 2025, for homes in normal condition unless stated. The house-or-apartment comparison pairs *ville e villini* with *abitazioni civili* inside each OMI zone and averages the result across the town, for the 6,064 comuni where both exist. The premium for excellent condition compares *ottimo* with *normale* in the same way, for 2,131 comuni. You can open every town in this piece on its own page, where both prices appear with their source and date, and browse prices by province on our [OMI page](https://www.expatliving.it/data/omi).\n\nI hope these comparisons help you see what your budget might buy, and which compromises feel right for you. If you've bought in Italy, I'd love to hear which you chose. Did you go for the house with the garden, or the apartment in the center, and would you choose the same again?","attribution":{"required":true,"license":{"name":"CC BY 4.0","url":"https://www.expatliving.it/terms#articles-license"},"creditText":"Expat Living Italy (expatliving.it)","citeAs":"“Dreaming of a house in Italy? An apartment might change what you can afford” by Caitlin, Expat Living Italy, 1 November 2026. https://www.expatliving.it/articles/house-or-apartment-italy-price","requirement":"Free to use with credit: cite Expat Living Italy and link to the article."}}