Following a spate of earthquakes in Italy, nearly one in three foreign buyers said the risk of seismic activity would discourage them from the local real estate market, according to a survey released Tuesday.
However, the survey also showed that 95% of users still consider Italy a safe place and 87% said that they would be willing to visit central Italy as a tourist in the next 12 months.
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The survey, which was conducted by Gate-away, an Italian property site, asked 700 users about their attitude toward the risks of seismic activity. According to the poll, 66% of future foreign homeowners are taking into account earthquakes when looking to purchase a second home in Italy.
And of those questioned, onlv 43% said they would "continue their search in safer areas of Abruzzo, Marche, Lazio, and Umbria," Simone Rossi, managing director of gate-away.com, said in a statement.
Italy has had a bad history with earthquakes, especially in the past two years. In August of last year, 300 people were killed in an earthquake that struck the regions of Abruzzo, Marche and Lazio. Then in January, Italy was hit with four earthquakes in four hours, causing buildings to collapse in those same areas.
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A report by Bloomberg last month said that sales prices in Italy dropped 14.6% from 2010-16 . Italy’s housing market has been unstable since the 2008 financial crisis and still has not recovered fully. The Gate-away survey went on to find that out of the existing foreign homeowners, 33% are investing in upgrades that would prevent future destruction of homes from natural disasters.
As Italian home prices slide, is it time to buy a slice of la dolce vita? https://t.co/6G605e2MsV pic.twitter.com/1zqgoT5ZOw
— Mansion Global (@MansionGlobal) February 17, 2017