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In the last months of 2017 there was a feeling that the crisis in the luxury real estate market in Italy was being overcome. The Prime Residential Index of Knight Frank, an international company in the luxury real estate sector is confirmation of this.

The Prime Residential Index is published twice a year, in June and December, and indicates the trend of the luxury real estate market based on the results of a survey carried out on 300 properties, 20 in each of the 15 geographical areas of North and Central Italy in which Knight Frank Italian Network operates, with its network of 17 agencies which have been present in Italy for several years.

The research shows above all how this sector is recovering after last summer, also recording increased interest from foreign investors favoured both by the reduction in property prices and by the Flex Tax. This was introduced with the Legge di Bilancio 2017, with the objective of attracting and incentivising High Net Worth Individuals, to reside in Italy.

The Chianti in particular is benefitting from this upswing. In fact, at the end of the fourth quarter of 2016, this area recorded a further decrease (about -7%) compared to the same period of 2015, a negative trend that occurred again in the second quarter of 2017 (-4.8%) compared to the same quarter in 2016. In the last three months of 2017, however, the Chianti recorded an increase of 2.4% compared to the same period in the previous year.

So foreigners return to invest in the Chianti area, as they did in the 1960s and 2008 (although with a downturn in the 1990s) when prices rose considerably. In the last ten years, the real estate market in this area has lost between 40% and 50% but now this new positive figure bodes well for 2018.

Unlike what happened twenty or thirty years ago, foreign investors are not only interested in buying a house in Chianti but also wine-producing companies in order to produce wine, which has long been an object of interest for the so-called UHNWI.

These include the return of British, Americans and Germans, and also, for the first time, the appearance of Asian investors.

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