How long does it take to sell where you live?

Nobody can tell you that. But we can tell you how many buyers actually turned up — in your comune, for a house the size of yours, last year. Not an estimate. Deeds that were registered.

Why nobody answers this honestly

Ask an agent how long it will take and you get a number. That number has nothing behind it: no one publishes how many days an Italian house spends on the market. The portals count from the day the listing goes up, reset the clock every time you drop the price, and delete the ones that never sold. It is the most confidently quoted figure in the trade and the least supported.

There is one thing that is actually counted, and it is counted by the tax office: every sale, once the deed is signed, in every one of the 7,560 comuni in Italy, sorted by the size of the property. That is what this page reads. It does not tell you how long your house will take. It tells you how many people bought a house like yours at all.

Why we ask for the square metres

Because the market for a studio flat and the market for a five-room house in the same town are not the same market, and averaging them together produces a number that describes neither. The tax office counts sales in five size bands, and we read the one your house falls into. If you leave the field empty you get the figure for the whole comune, which is still true, just blunter.

What this number does not say

It does not say what your house is worth, and it does not say what yours will do. A house in poor condition in a busy market can sit for a year, and a well-priced one in an empty market can go in a fortnight. What it does say is how many people completed a purchase like yours in a whole year — and that is the fact every conversation about price and patience should start from, instead of ending there.

Sales figures: Agenzia delle Entrate — OMI, registered deeds. Source citation required by the tax office for any use of this data.