According to EPRA, the European Public Real Estate Association, the listing of Italian property company Coima on the country’s MTA exchange in May, following a €215 million IPO, could result in a renaissance in Italy’s tiny listed real estate sector.

Coima has been structured as an Italian REIT or SIIQ (Società di Investimento Immobiliare Quotata). EPRA has for some time been pushing for Italy to introduce an improved REIT regime that would give investors better access to the listed market of Europe’s fourth-largest economy by GDP. The European average for the underlying real estate investment market is 4.90 percent, but Italy manages only a paltry 0.55 percent, EPRA says, the lowest percentage on the continent.

EPRA believes that Italy has strong growth potential. It gives Spain as an example, where investor-friendly amendments to its REIT regime were made in 2013; since then, the Spanish market has added almost €6 billion in market capitalisation and has i