Price premium for buildings energy efficiency: empirical findings from a hedonic model

Several studies about the relationship between buildings energy performance and residential property prices in Europe have been published in the last years. Nevertheless, there is a lack of studies regarding the Italian real estate market, probably due to the difficulties to access official data on property characteristics and transactions prices. The purpose of this research is to evaluate the impact of buildings energy performance, as expressed by Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs), on the prices of residential properties in the city of Padua, representative of medium-size cities in Northern Italy. The study is based on a hedonic price model, which aims at estimating the impact on house prices due to the improvement of energy performance. Empirical findings show a positive and statistically significant relationship between buildings with better EPCs and house prices. Furthermore, the relationship is stronger between lower classes, than between higher ones. Nevertheless, the study reveals a negative gap between the net present value of potential future savings and the estimated price premium.