A research by Italian parking company Idealpark shows that garages in large Italian cities cost more than anywhere else in the world.
Next time you buy a property in an Italian city, make sure you get a parking space to go with it. Italy tops the chart for the world’s most expensive garages, according to research by Italian car lift manufacturer Idealpark—with central Rome, Florence and Naples all ranking higher in central London or Chicago.
Buying a place to park your car in Rome’s Piazza Navona area can set you back €150,000—as much as you’d spend for a renovated one-bedroom flat somewhere in the Lazio countryside—and some have been sold for as high as €200,000.
Central Florence and Naples are not far behind at €130,000 for the former and €125,0000 for the latter, compared to an equivalent of €120,000 in London, €60,000 in Sydney and €38,000 in Chicago.
In ultra-expensive Portofino, people have paid as much as €250,000 for the pleasure of having a place where to put their car. Even comparatively ‘cheaper’ Milan, where garages cost just over half of what they do in Rome and reach a maximum of €110,000, is still the eighth most expensive city in the world.
When you buy a house, however, the cost of a parking space is sometimes rolled up into that of the house, and you may be able to pay slightly less for it than if you were to buy it separately. In this case, it may be worth buying a garage even if you don’t have a car, because you can always rent it out.
According to ACI, Italy’s automobile club, Italians spend two years of their life looking for a place to park their car, wasting anywhere between 4 and 14 minutes at any given time. Italy, after all, is car country supreme—car park association Aipark estimates that 60% of people use cars or motorbikes as their main form of transportation, against an average of 30-35% abroad. And with an Aipark-estimated shortage of some 350,000 spaces in car parks across the country, garage rentals are in the region of €2,000-3,000 a year in city centres.
