Real estate foreclosures: their functioning and the effects of recent reforms

Lengthy in-court debt recovery procedures may adversely affect the economic and financial system, for example in the management of non-performing loans. This paper analyses the characteristics of real estate foreclosures in Italy and the determinants of their length. A decomposition of procedures into phases shows that the phases preceding and following the actual sale also contribute significantly to the total length of the procedure. The length also turns out to be influenced by both observable and unobservable court characteristics. We also find a reduction in the length of the procedures following recent reforms: new regulations are helping to reduce the length of the ‘pre-sale’ phase and, above all, of the sale phase.