Look at Milan’s official property valuations zone by zone and the first thing that stands out is not how much the centre costs. It is that the most expensive zone in the city, at the top of the range, is not in the centre.
The figures below come from the Property Market Observatory of the Italian Revenue Agency, second half of 2025, and refer to apartments in normal condition. The grouping by band is ours.
City Life above the historic centre
The zone the Revenue Agency calls City Life (code C13) is classified as semi-central and sits between €8,300 and €12,500 per square metre. Centro Storico-Brera (code B15), central by definition, sits between €9,500 and €12,000. At the bottom of the range the centre stays well ahead: buying there starts from a floor that does not exist elsewhere. But at the top of the range the skyscraper district goes past it.
It is a clue to how the Milan market is moving: in several zones the building matters more than the label on the band, meaning its condition, the year it was built and the services around it. A new building in a regenerated area reaches values the historic fabric only touches at its best.
The four bands, and the distance between them
The 42 zones of Milan for which apartment values exist break down like this:
- Central, 9 zones: from €5,000 to €12,000 per square metre.
- Semi-central, 9 zones: from €4,000 to €12,500.
- Peripheral, 20 zones: from €2,700 to €5,700.
- Suburban, 4 zones: from €1,850 to €3,500.
Between the City Life maximum of €12,500 and the maximum of Quarto Oggiaro-Sacco (code E8), which at €1,850 to €2,700 per square metre is the cheapest zone recorded, the ratio is roughly 4.6 to 1. Those are the two extremes, not the city average, and they sit inside the same municipality.
The figure that gets discussed least is another one: the peripheral band holds 20 zones out of 42, almost half of those recorded. Milan prices get talked about through the centre and the fashionable districts, but the average Milanese home sits in that band, between €2,700 and €5,700 per square metre. The spread inside the periphery, more than double from its lowest zone to its highest, is wider than the gap separating some central zones from each other.
How to read these numbers, and how not to
OMI valuations are minimum-maximum ranges per homogeneous zone, not prices. They are there to give you the order of magnitude of an area, not to establish what a specific apartment is worth. In the same zone, at the same floor area, two homes can sit at opposite ends of the range.
What the zone tables do not contain, and what moves the figure in a real negotiation:
- the floor, and whether there is a lift;
- the aspect: a second floor onto an internal courtyard and a bright top floor, in the same building, are not worth the same;
- the condition of the systems and installations, the item that scares off more buyers than any other;
- the service charges, which buyers are scrutinising more and more closely;
- the energy rating, which now enters the negotiation and not just the listing.
Two warnings that make these numbers useful rather than misleading. First: they are not closing prices. OMI valuations describe the market value of a zone, not the figures actually written into deeds, and they replace neither a survey nor the negotiation. Second: the values quoted here refer to normal condition, so by construction they exclude both the high-end refurbishment and the property that needs gutting, which in reality sit beyond both ends of the range.
The same applies to the “average” figures in circulation. The average of a zone containing renovated homes and homes needing everything describes neither of them: it is a number that corresponds to nothing real. That is why the range, which looks less precise, is the more honest of the two.
What this gives you if you have to sell
A zone range tells you whether your idea of what your house is worth is within the realm of the possible. If you have €6,000 per square metre in mind in a zone that records between €2,700 and €4,000, the problem is not the buyer who fails to understand: it is the expectation.
The reverse holds too, and it happens more often than people think. Someone who bought twenty years ago in a zone then considered second rate sometimes undervalues their own house by a wide margin, because the figure in their head is the one from back then.
Our online valuation starts from this zone data and adds the characteristics of your property: you get an indication of value on screen, free and with no account to create. It is a starting point, not an offer. That comes after the visit, and only if the property fits our buying criteria, within 48 hours of the visit.
Source of the values: Italian Revenue Agency, Property Market Observatory, valuations for the second half of 2025, apartment category, normal state of repair. Grouping by band by LF Immobiliare.