How Energy Retrofit Maintenance Affects Residential Buildings Market Value

By now, it is clear the built environment could play an important role in fighting climate change, since it accounts for around 39% of global energy-related carbon emissions. Generally speaking, Italian residential stock is over 50 years old and around 16% of that needs large interventions due to its poor maintenance condition. So, the maintenance in this context can play a pivotal role in acheiving both energy efficiency and asset valorization. Introduced by a reference framework for the question in the title, this paper presents the case study: a portion of a working-class neighborhoods near the metropolitan city of Turin, marked by very recurrent typologies for the period (early seventies). The local real estate market is discussed to investigate the extraordinary maintenance impact on the property values: the paper considers the market value increase due to the energy class upgrade and the external look improvement. Individual owners putting money on this group of works get a very cost-effective investment and take advantage of Italian legislation supporting these kinds of interventions: the whole is greater than the sum of its parts and in turn greater than the cost assumed for the renovation work.