Buyer Advice

Help and advice for those seeking property in Tuscany

This page seeks to demystify the process of investing in property in Italy. We aim to help you to gain confidence in your ability to buy a home in such a colourful country.

The section is divided into Buyer Advice and Recommended Reading.

If you would like more advice please don't hesitate to contact the IPG directly.

Step by Step Guide - How to buy your property in Tuscany

The IPG step by step Tuscany property buyers guide will lead you through the buying process in Italy

1. Website Enquiry

   Excuse us if we ask a lot of questions but this is an important process in your life and we need to glean as much information from you to be able to help you most efficiently. Use our property locating service to find the properties that fit your criteria most closely. Sometimes it takes a visit to view the properties to really know what is right for you.

2. Visit to view properties

   We can be there as much or as little as you want. We can arrange hotels and hire cars we can even suggest the best flights. If you want to experience first hand the pleasure of owning a home in our area of Italy, come and stay on our campus.

   During your trip we can discuss your needs further and view the properties you have found most fit what you are looking for. I often recommend each least two visits to likeable properties at different times of the day.

   As with all real estate the market here is very buoyant and so we will often be able to show you new properties that have just come onto our books. We make contracts with all our sellers to safeguard our buyers.

3. Offer

   Unlike the US where an offer is 23 pages of contract, an informal letter called a proposal to buy accompanied by 2000 euros will secure any property and mark it Under contracton our website.

   We will ask for photo ID at this point to accompany the letter of intent to buy the property.

   Once the seller has agreed the price offered, we can then go ahead and provide a quote for the closing costs. A rough guide is that they will run to 10% of the purchase price.

4. Inspections

   These are made by a geometra, who is a combination of an architect and a surveyor. They will inspect the condition of the property, the boundary lines and the ownership of the property. They will make sure that the property you intend to buy is free of easements or deeds. They will make sure the property can be legally sold and then they will write the preliminary contract.
   
   We now urge clients to also pay for a technical survey to be done on the property that they wish to buy to ensure no unplesant surprises.  These cost about 700 euros and cover the state of the electrics, sewers, internal kitchen and bathrooms.  It can even cover the ability to put a pool in on the property. Any information regarding town planning rules only has a shelf life of about 3 months as town planning regulations change so regularly.  Finally, if you do wish to put in for planning permission on a property.  Do it as soon as you buy the property incase you are no longer able to carry out your plans five years later.

1. Preliminary Contract

   The preliminary contract (Compromesso) is a private agreement stating the full price of the house and the conditions that need to be met before the sale.  Since January 2007, all registered real estate agents are obliged to register all the preliminary contracts.  This is paid for by you the buyer and will cost 168 euros which is the fixed registration fee, plus 2 bolli (these are currently 14,62 euros each) and 0.5% of the deposit.  In the case that your deposit is 24.000 euros and so there will be a registration fee of 120 euros. The publicly recorded price is nowaways the same as the price paid in most cases.  Cases in which the public is less will be due to the owner selling within a five year period and not wishing to be stung for capital gains tax.  At this point the buyer is required to pay 30% of the total sale price.

   This will seem a lot but it will ensure that no one can be gazumped and it protects both the buyer and the seller against defaulting on the contract. As this is a private agreement we can sign this on your behalf or we can.

   Before the geometra can go ahead and write this contract they need to research the origin of the house i.e. who the sellers bought from, they will check if there are any liens or mortgages on the property, they will check for easements and who all the confining neighbours are.  At this stage, you can also make known any conditions that you wish to place on the purchase.  For example, it may be important to you to have permission for a pool.  You can have this written into the Preliminary Contract and, if permission is not subsequently received, then you are able to withdraw from the purchase with a full refund.

   Books on the subject of buying property in Italy always talk about the coltivatori diritti; this is a law whereby a registered farmer can purchase a piece of rural property for the declared (lower) tax honest price. This whole problem is avoided by getting any neighbouring farmers to sign a letter whereby they decline this right of purchase and will not pursue it in the future, thus protecting our buyers.

   Once the preliminary contract is signed we regard the purchase as a done-deal and put the property into pending status. At this point you need only pay our commission which, if you decide to go for the standard legal package is 3% plus local VAT called IVA running at 20%. The geometra and taxes are paid at final contract.

2. Final Contract

   By this time, any conditions that need to be met by the sellers have already been met and that any queries arising from the writing of the preliminary contract have been settled so both buyers and sellers get to meet each other around the table to sign the final paperwork and exchange pleasantries. The only check that cannot be completed until just before the final contract is the lien check. It is vital that this is done just before we walk into the notary because it is still always possible that the vendors could put a mortgage on the property even if the compromesso is signed.

   The notary will need your proof of ID at the contract, so dont forget your passport.