How much does a home cost in Italy? It depends where you look: according to the OMI 2025 quotations, the ratio between the most expensive and the cheapest municipality is almost fifty to one. In Portofino the average sale price is €10,767 per square metre; in Salaparuta, in the province of Trapani, €225. For the cost of a studio flat in Portofino, you can buy an entire building in Salaparuta.
In this article we analyse the 2025 quotations of the Property Market Observatory (OMI), with over 15,500 municipal records, to map the extremes of the Italian market.
The Most Expensive Towns: Luxury Lives Outside the Metropolises
The top of the ranking does not belong to the big cities. Portofino dominates at €10,767 per square metre, followed by Cortina d'Ampezzo (€9,419), which after the 2026 Winter Olympics consolidated its standing as the Alpine capital of luxury. Then Capri (€7,738) and Anacapri (€6,238), followed by the Alpine gems: Courmayeur at €6,150, Selva di Val Gardena at €5,644, Livigno at €5,500, Ortisei at €5,494.
Rounding out the top tier are Forte dei Marmi (€5,285), Pré-Saint-Didier and Camogli (€5,050). The common thread is clear: exclusive seaside and exclusive mountains. The first metropolis, Milano, only comes after, at €4,948 per square metre.
The municipalities with the highest sale prices
Average sale price per square metre, OMI 2025 quotations.
The Big Cities: Milan Outpaces Them All
Among the major cities, Milano is a case apart: €4,948 per square metre, well above Roma (€3,001) and Firenze (€2,976). Bologna follows at €2,901, Napoli at €2,370 and Torino at €2,058: buying 70 square metres in Milano costs as much as buying nearly 170 in Torino.
The gap between Milano and the rest of Italy has widened over the past decade: international demand, the city's pull on universities and finance, and limited supply have pushed the Lombard capital to levels no other Italian metropolis comes close to.
The Towns Where Homes Cost the Least
At the opposite end of the ranking, prices fall below €250 per square metre. The first two places are both in Sicily's Belice Valley: Salaparuta (€225) and Poggioreale (€230), towns rebuilt after the 1968 earthquake and never fully repopulated. Third is Valmozzola, in the Parma Apennines, at €239.
The geography of cheap housing coincides with the geography of depopulation: inner Apennine areas, rural Sicily, non-tourist mountains. These are the same territories where many municipalities launched one-euro-home schemes: here a real house, at market prices, still costs less than a used compact car.
The municipalities with the lowest sale prices
Average sale price per square metre, OMI 2025 quotations, ascending order.
The Price Map: Where Value Concentrates
The three-dimensional map shows house prices in every Italian municipality with an OMI quotation. The tallest columns trace three property Italies: the tourist Alpine arc, from Valle d'Aosta to the Dolomites; the premium coasts, from Liguria to the Amalfi Coast and the islands; and the Milan area, the only metropolitan pole that competes with the holiday resorts.
The colour, based on residents' income, reveals where prices are supported by the local economy and where instead by outside demand: in the tourist resorts the columns are tall but residents' income is often middling — a sign that the buyers are mostly non-residents.
Sale prices per square metre by municipality
Height: OMI 2025 price. Colour: residents' average income (MEF 2023).
How Many Years of Salary a Home Costs
The most concrete way to read these numbers is against incomes. A 70-square-metre flat costs about €753,000 in Portofino and about €15,750 in Salaparuta: in the first case you need more than seven years of the local average income — itself the highest in Italy at €98,577; in the second, a few months of a national average income suffice.
Among the big cities the heaviest ratio is Milan's: €346,000 for 70 square metres against an average income of €40,521, more than eight and a half years. Roma asks around €210,000 (nearly seven years of a €31,360 average income), while Torino, at €144,000 and a €28,889 income, stays under five years: among the major cities it is the most accessible market relative to local incomes.
This price-to-income ratio is the most honest measure of housing affordability: more than the absolute price, it says how long a family must save to buy. And it shows that the distance between Milano and the rest of the country is not just a matter of prices, but of years of working life.
What This Means for Buyers
For house-hunters, these data suggest a simple reading: the Italian market is not one market but an archipelago. Within the same country coexist global-metropolis prices (Milano, the luxury resorts) and a huge reserve of marginally priced housing in the inner areas.
A low price, however, carries information: scarcity of services, jobs and population. Before relocating, it pays to look beyond the square metre: the municipality's demographics, incomes and environment. On DatiItalia you can find the complete profile of each of Italy's 7,896 municipalities, from OMI prices to the population pyramid.
Methodological note: average sale prices per square metre from OMI 2025 quotations; municipalities with several OMI zones have multiple records. Income is the average MEF IRPEF income, tax year 2023.