Buying a home in Italy

The things that apply whoever you are and whatever you are signing — citizenship, the codice fiscale, the language of the deed — are on the international guide. This page is about what is particular to buying a property.

How a purchase actually runs

There are usually three steps, and only the last one happens in front of the notary.

The offer. You make a written offer, normally through the estate agent, with a cheque attached. If the seller accepts it, you are already bound — this is the step foreign buyers most often underestimate, because in some countries an accepted offer commits nobody.

The preliminary contract, the preliminare or compromesso. It sets the price, the date of the deed and what happens if either side pulls out. It is a contract, not an intention. It is not the English exchange of contracts and it does not transfer ownership: it obliges both parties to sign the deed later.

The deed, in front of the notary, where ownership passes, the money moves and the taxes are paid.

The deposit, and what it costs to change your mind

The sum you pay at the preliminary stage is usually a caparra confirmatoria, and it has an effect people do not expect: if you pull out, the seller keeps it; if the seller pulls out, they owe you twice what you paid. It is not a booking fee. Decide the amount with that in mind.

What we check before the deed

This is the part you are paying for, and it happens before you ever see us. It is a legal check on the title, not a technical one on the building.

Who owns the property, and by what title — and whether that title has a weakness.
What is registered against it: mortgages, seizures, rights of way, claims. A mortgage on the seller's side is normal and is cleared at the deed; it is not normal to discover it on the day.
The declarations and references about the property that the law requires the deed to contain, and the correspondence with what is recorded in the cadastral records.
Condominium charges, and whether any are outstanding.

What we do not check, and who should

A notary is not a surveyor and not a planning technician. We do not have the competence to establish whether the building as it stands was built and altered in accordance with the permits granted for it, and we do not carry out that assessment. If anyone tells you the notary's checks cover it, they are describing something we cannot deliver.

It matters, because in Italy the building on the ground and the building in the records diverge more often than you would expect, and the consequences fall on the owner.

The safe course, and the one we recommend, is to appoint a technician you trust — a geometra, an architect or an engineer — and have them make an access-to-records request at the municipality: obtain the permits and the filed plans, and compare them with what is actually there. Relative to the price of a property it costs very little, and it is the only way to know.

Do it before you sign the preliminary contract, not after. Afterwards you are already committed, and what could have been a condition of the offer becomes a problem to negotiate your way out of.

The taxes

What you pay depends above all on who is selling. Buying from a private individual, you pay registration tax; buying from a company that built or renovated the property, you may pay VAT instead, and the two arrive at very different totals.

It also depends on whether the prima casa relief applies — and here there is one condition that decides it for most foreign buyers.

You cannot have the relief if you are not going to be resident.It has nothing to do with your nationality: an American or a German gets it on the same terms as an Italian. What it requires is that you transfer your residence to the municipality where the property is, within eighteen months of the purchase.

Note what that does and does not mean. The residence has to be in that municipality — not necessarily in that flat. You can register as resident in the comune and live in the property next door. But you do have to move your residence to Italy, in earnest.

So if you are buying a holiday home and intend to keep your residence where it is, the relief is not available to you, and any quote that assumed it would be wrong by a large amount. Tell us which of the two you are, and we will price the right one.

We calculate both scenarios where it is uncertain, so you can see the difference before you commit rather than after.

How long it takes

From preliminary contract to deed, six to eight weeks is ordinary. What stretches it is rarely the notary: it is a mortgage application, a document that has to come from abroad, a planning irregularity that has to be regularised, or a power of attorney that has to be drawn up, apostilled and posted.

All four are foreseeable weeks in advance. None of them is fixable in the last three days.

What to send us for a quote

The address of the property, its rendita catastale — the notional income the tax office attributes to it, which is what several of the taxes are calculated on, and without which no quote can be more than a guess — the price, who is selling, whether a private person or a company, whether there is a mortgage involved, your citizenship, and whether you will be in Italy on the day.

That is enough for a written quote, usually the same day, with taxes and fee shown separately.

Write to segreteria@notaiochianese.it.

Last updated 4 September 2026