Elogio dell’imperfezione dei mercati immobiliari urbani: metafora naturale, metonimia economica, autonimia estimativa

1. Imperfection of urban real estate markets The false idea that the equilibrium in the free market can be achieved through the mechanism of individual ration-ality, in which consumers and producers expect to obtain the highest utility and productivity by participating in the mechanism of trading, has greatly reduced the ability and the potential of “science of assessments”, and particularly its hermeneutic peculiarity. Real estate market is not a perfect economic place. In facts: - urban real estate is a complex goods whose shape con-tains both conflictual and complementary aspects like utility, productivity and capital gain expectation; - territorial, environmental, infrastructural and landscape quality influences urban revenue and modifies the structure of location demand. Rent depends on demand prices and the global demand, caused by the extraordi-nary architectonic and landscape attributes, raises prices over the natural level. In a perfect market, exceptional and extraordinary prices are meant as non important events but the social and cul-tural profile of a real estate market and its shape are per-vaded with these peculiarity. The cap rate, his variations and his fluctuations synthesize tensions in prices and den-sity of value in not yet mature real estate markets. Urban and economic shape’s growth converges to the concentration of the wealth of the settled community and contributes to the social polarization. Urban shape often results from the local and global wealth distribution pat-tern. 2. Natural, biological and cultural metaphor In praise of imperfection is the passionate autobiography of Rita Levi Montelcini published in 1987, the next year when she gained the Nobel in Medicine for the discovery of the Nerve Growth Factor (NGF), an agent responsible of the development of the nerve cells. The author empha-size the trend of neuronal cells to grow toward neoplastic tissues and shows the self-organizational ability of natu-ral systems when fluctuating. Human being is more im-perfect than other species, like insects, and has been ex-posed to ad-aptation and ex-aptation processes that brought to the increase of his brain’s volume and of his intellectual ability. The ability to find harmony in chaos, that we call “inter-pretation”, comes down from that immense and deviated psychical and behavioural universe, swinging between nature and culture, conscience and unconscious, reason and emotion, observation and imagination, belief and in-ference. Interpretation, the only foundation of knowledge and action, is the essence of “the judgement of value”. 3. Economic metonymy Language impress a constructive action on tangible real-ity, as highlighted by language sciences and in genetic epistemology; in economy, language of money acts first as an instrument of measure, then as an attractor of the economic operating. The contemporary advanced econ-omy produces surplus reflecting itself in money, or in every good that can be assumed as money; these goods – that can be called “money-goods” because they work like money – are characterized by a demand that can become infinitely elastic and so can impress structural imperfec-tions in their markets. “Market is the place of narrative interaction of economic signs”, a communicative organism in which the money dynamic transforms prices in values. In the metonimic relationships good/price (market economy) and price/value (capitalistic economy) the progressive ab-straction of natural reality in axiological meanings takes place. In a market economy the prices of goods depend on their value; in a capitalistic economy the values of (capital) goods depend on their price. Economic metonymy consists of the progressive transformation of the object in an economic asset through the relationship between value and price, and in the following transformation of that asset in good capital through the upside down relationship between price and value. The continuous fluctuation of real estate prices generates expectations that become the main reason of investments. Real estate property is worth because it may be worth further. Money is the asset that expresses at most this ability of meaning shift and of abstraction. Since 1970 real estate showed its ability to self-reference, that is the ability to create value apart from the functional and physical improvement. Nowadays, the real estate se-curitisation makes real estate a highly complex asset, able to attract and transmute the exceeding liquidity of eco-nomic system. Evaluations support the city project which aims to control the processes of redistribution of wealth in the wider con-text of the territory, particularly when social and aesthetic values are involved in growing of private capital that modifies architectonic typology whit building restoration, and landscape whit functional urban redevelopment in-terventions. In this cases rapid phenomena of filtering up modify the social structure of fragile historical centres that are transformed into holyday village that enhance the scenic values at detriment of urban ones. 7. Estimation autonimy The assessment approach to the project and plan becomes consistent with the self-referential processes that charac-terize the urban imperfect markets making incomprehen-sible the increase in value of real estate. In linguistic an expression is used in an autonymic way when it does not expose the meaning but the significant in a sort of self-reference. In philosophy an autonimic term is a word at the same time “used and mentioned”, where “use” refers to meaning and “mention” to signifi-cant. Beauty is the most important code of the improvement of a historical urban centre and of the increase in value of its real estate; the analysis of the relationships beauty/price, beauty/cap-rate points out this estimatory autonimy. It is possible to represent the estimatory autonimy refer-ring to the capital theory of F. Rizzo, that considers the value of an asset as a function of its actual value and its potential increase in value. The estimation model mostly able to represent this ap-proach to the valuation of the real estate characterized by a high growth potential is the capitalization procedure proposed by C. Forte in which the cap rate is assumed as the most important variable, that is the variable able to represent the capability of real estate to gain or to lose liquidity. Liquidity is a character that determinates the capital value. This character can be expressed by the cap factor that is a multiplayer of the yield. A high cap factor indicates a high liquidity and vice versa. Liquidity and its measure, the cap factor, indicate the duration of the real estate examined and so its capability to concentrate value. This capability is a measure of the autoreferentiality of the real estate. Autoreferentiality is a character of real es-tate like autonimy is the disposition of the estimation practice to represent that character.

Il presente contributo costituisce la prima parte, quella generale e concettuale, di un lavoro più ampio che ha come oggetto l’analisi del mercato immobiliare di Or-tigia, centro storico di Siracusa, e la formazione di un modello di valutazione diretto al patrimonio immobilia-re residenziale di questa specifica realtà economico-urbana. Le particolarità di questo contesto immobiliare stimolano la riflessione generale sugli effetti reali de-terminati sul territorio dalle tensioni dei mercati dei ca-pitali, globali e locali, circa le quali qui si propongono talune riflessioni. Esse riguardano anche il rapporto tra economia ed estimo con riferimento ad alcuni antece-denti concettuali, metaforici, metonimici e autonimici appunto, ritenuti utili premesse per affrontare in sede operativa il percorso interpretativo di mercati immobi-liari sistematicamente imperfetti. Queste conoscenze consentono di predisporre strumenti operativi utili alla pianificazione e alla tutela dei valori urbanistici e am-bientali specie in corrispondenza di evidenti e preoccu-panti “derive speculative” che snaturano i delicati equi-libri della bellezza quando essa è sintesi “inevitabile” degli apporti dell’uomo e della natura. Combinando stimoli e percorsi disciplinari (solo appa-rentemente) diversi e innestandone le suggestioni nel discorrere economico-estimativo si intende sottolineare il potenziale di una disciplina, la scienza delle valuta-zioni, solida e allo stesso tempo ibrida, mostrando quanto essa sia accreditata nel prendere parte ai proces-si decisionali specie quando questi interessano i valori alti della comunità sociale e le loro ricadute sul quoti-diano. In tal senso, lo studio dei mercati immobiliari è stato inteso come nocciolo imprescindibile del discorso sulla città e sul territorio, come anche sulla bellezza e sul capitale, sulla sua natura e le sue possibilità. I mercati immobiliari manifestano forme di imperfe-zione che la scienza delle valutazioni può impegnarsi a rendere costruttive in forza della sua intrinseca funzio-ne normativa; in questa direzione coopera con la pianificazione, oggi come mai prima alla ricerca di forme di validazione dello strumento urbanistico che aggreghino attorno ad esso il più ampio consenso. La conoscenza critica dei valori che animano “i giochi dello scambio” è assunta qui come condizione preliminare della gestione di territori fragili e sottoposti a forti tensioni che vi inducono trasformazioni repentine e radicali. Questa conoscenza include il rapporto – critico dal punto di vista etico – tra probabilità e possibilità, cioè tra le regole del mercato concorrenziale perfetto e le sfide dell’attività spe-culativa che dà forma e luogo ai mercati imperfetti. Più in generale, un sistema di probabilità è un attrattore verso uno stato di equilibrio, mentre un campo di possibilità è il luogo ove la vitalità del sistema genera forme di disequilibrio che consentono ad esso di evolvere cambiando di stato. La natura monetaria dei capitali immobiliari nell’era della globalizzazione è argomento imprescindibile della cultura finanziaria del giudizio di valore se e nella misura in cui esso intende contribuire a rendere giustizia alla bellezza (del capitale) della città.