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The purpose of this paper is to assess the impact of the Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) on the Italian real estate market, focusing on old buildings. The contribution of EPC labels to house prices and to market liquidity was measured to analyze different aspects of the selling process.

A traditional hedonic model was used to explain the variables of listing price, transaction price, time on the market and bargaining outcome. In addition to EPC labels, the building construction period and the main features of apartments were included in the model. A sample of 879 transactions of old properties in Turin in 2011-2014 was considered.

A first hedonic model let us suppose that low EPC labels (E, F and G) were priced in the market although EPC labels explained only 6-8 per cent of price variation. A second full hedonic model, which included apartment characteristics, revealed that EPC labels had no impact on prices.

In Italy EPC has been mandatory for house transactions since 2009, so there are few studies on the effect of EPC on the Italian real estate market at least to our knowledge. Furthermore, unusually for the Italian context, in this paper also transaction prices were analyzed, in addition to the more frequently used listing prices.

The main purpose of this paper is to explore the listing behaviours of agents and sellers. In particular, the paper analyzes listing prices and the predicting power of the house features described in advertisements, to improve their use in real estate valuations. In Italy, selling prices are not public information and therefore listing prices play a key role for market analyses and are used by real estate companies and appraisers for estimating house values.

A traditional hedonic model was used to measure the overall contribution to listing price of the characteristics described in advertisements. The analysis was performed both on houses put on the market by agents and on houses put on the market by sellers. Listing price distributions and their deviation from normality were analyzed. Furthermore, a hedonic analysis was performed, which consisted of two steps. First, the coefficient of determination for any characteristic was computed. Second, the overall contribution to the listing price of the characteristics described in advertisements was measured.

The analysis shows the presence of factors which affect listing prices and which are not revealed to buyers in real estate advertisements. On the other hand, the presence of characteristics that do not affect the listing price but are described in advertisements was also found. Furthermore, agents and sellers showed different behaviours. While the marginal contributions of each characteristic estimated on a sample of houses put on the market by agents were significant, the analysis reveals that listing prices of houses put on the market by sellers are not explained by the house features.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to propose a hedonic approach to exploring the major determinants of listing prices of houses on sale on the Italian market. The listing behaviour of agents and sellers and the predicting power of the observable characteristics could address the use of listing prices in real estate valuations. At the same time, the potential presence of unobservable factors that affect the listing price could be a source of bias in estimating the value of houses.

The paper proposes a statistical approach to investigate the role played by each house characteristic on the selling process. The paper aims to compare the impact of building characteristics, apartment characteristics and location on the bargaining outcome based on a case study in the Italian real estate market.

The paper first measures the overall contribution of characteristics and location to prices and bargaining outcome. Second, it studies the association between each characteristic and list price – the starting point of the selling process – and between each characteristic and selling price, i.e. the price agreed on to close a transaction. In order to focus on bargaining, the paper computed the association between each characteristic and bargaining outcome.

Structural characteristics empirically showed low association with bargaining outcome. In contrast, the paper found that location had a significant impact on the bargaining: location is the most important factor in negotiation. On the other hand, location amenities and disamenities may be attractive or unattractive depending on the buyers, and this could influence the bargaining outcome.

The paper findings confirm that factors influencing house prices are not always important factors in negotiation, in line with the literature on negotiation. Hedonic analysis showed the importance of house characteristics to explain house prices. Nevertheless, structural characteristics did not explain bargaining outcome variation. The findings also support the importance of a geographical segmentation to improve price prediction and bargaining outcome variation.