Marche or Tuscany? The 2025 numbers
Official valuations tell a different story from the cliché: the Marche countryside costs a quarter less, not a fraction.
Anyone looking for an Italian farmhouse starts in Tuscany, and is usually told that the Marche costs «a fraction» of it. That is an exaggeration, and it is worth replacing with the real figures: they are public, published by the Italian Revenue Agency, and they tell a better story than the one they replace.
A quarter less, not a fraction
In 2025 the average valuation for homes outside provincial capitals — the countryside, where farmhouses are — was €1,643/m² in Tuscany and €1,221/m² in the Marche. That is 74%: a quarter less, not a tenth. Anyone promising more is selling, not informing.
The average hides the useful part. The Siena countryside sits at €1,234/m², almost identical to the Fermo countryside (€1,230/m²) and just 3% above Macerata (€1,194/m²). The real gap is with Grosseto, at €2,184/m², and Florence, at €1,826: there a comparable farmhouse costs nearly twice as much.
The two regions are moving in opposite directions
What matters to a buyer today is not the level but the direction. In 2025 countryside valuations rose 1.6% in the Marche and fell 0.2% in Tuscany. Within the Marche, Macerata is up 1.9% and Fermo 1.0%; in Tuscany Siena and Pistoia are down 1% and Massa down 4.3%.
This is a recent reversal and should be read as such: from 2011 to 2021 Marche valuations fell without interruption, and the recovery only began in the last few years. Buying now does not mean arriving in an expensive market: it means arriving in one that has stopped falling.
Why the inland costs less than the Italian average
The reason is geographic before it is economic. Comparing each municipality against the national average, 129 of roughly 225 Marche municipalities sit between 30% and 60% of it, almost all in the Apennine and pre-Apennine belt. High values cluster on the coast, where country farmhouses simply do not exist.
In plain terms: the landscape you are buying — hills, hill towns, stone — is exactly where the market is cheapest, not because the place is worse but because the price is set by the sea.
What these numbers do not say
OMI valuations are average ranges by zone and by condition: they say what a square metre is worth in an area, not what the specific farmhouse in front of you will cost. A shell to restore and a finished house on the same road sit in different bands, and the difference between them is the work. Public figures do not help there: you need a quote.
A farmhouse is waiting.
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