The present work focuses on the considerable amount of real estate non-performing loans in Italy, not favored by the state of judicial proceedings. In this view various governmental initiatives intended to facilitate a more efficient liquidation of underlying real estate assets. In this regard, it could be useful better understand main causes of discount between market value and forced sale price with the primary aim of a more comprehensive determination of the value of mortgages ‘underlying guarantees and not least in order to improve further valorization processes of assets intended to get a higher selling price; starting from results of existing literature, an analysis of main determinants of the gap between the estimated listing price and forced sale value has been conducted, sampling 225 cases of forced residential property sales between 2014 and 2018 in the South of Italy.