A sale is undoubtedly a complex act which requires that the Notary and other professionals (such as surveyors, technicians and others) carry out a series of checks necessary to guarantee to those who buy the correct existence and ownership of the property so as not to incur administrative and/or criminal sanctions.
Therefore, a series of guidelines will be indicated below to observe how to make a well-considered choice of house and, above all, comply with the law and bureaucracy.
If you intend to buy an apartment, it is good to know that the buyer and the seller are obliged to pay the seller’s debts for unpaid condominium expenses relating to the current and previous year. To avoid any unpleasant inconvenience, it is advisable to ask the administrator for a certification on the status of payments; however, if only the compromise has been signed and not yet the deed, the administrator may not give the buyer this information for privacy reasons since the buyer with the compromise is not yet the full owner. Therefore, the seller will be responsible for obtaining this certification from the administrator.
To avoid any problem, the first thing to ascertain, to prevent any problem, is that the seller is the owner of the chosen property.
How is this verification done?
Suppose the seller is the effective and sole owner. In that case, this information can be obtained by request at the local Revenue Agency office, the seller’s data or, if not available, with the cadastral data of the house, a search indicating which goods the seller owns or asking to know who owns a particular property. Furthermore, before signing the preliminary contract, the buyer can always ask the seller for a copy of the deed of purchase of the house.
Another helpful element is to check if the seller is in the community of property regime since, in this case, the spouse must also give his consent to the sale.
However, if the seller is a company, it must be ascertained that the same is not in bankruptcy.
Equally fundamental to carry out the appropriate legal, technical, administrative and fiscal checks is the preliminary examination of the documentation relating to the “origins”, i.e. those titles based on which the seller has bought a property in the past: it can be another sale, a will or a donation.
In the case of a donation, it will be necessary to make a further assessment of the time elapsed since the donation took place; more precisely, it would be required to ascertain that the last act of provenance is not a donation and that there have been no other donations over the previous twenty years. All the more so because, otherwise, there is the risk that the person excluded from the deed, even after the purchase, could claim rights to the property and take possession of it.
All information relating to property transfers, mortgages, foreclosures or judicial questions is public and can be easily obtained by consulting the Real Estate Register held at the Agenzia delle Entrate land office by carrying out a mortgage inspection and requesting a mortgage which all the news on the types of formalities present in the mortgage database will emerge.
The preliminary checks also include the investigation into the possible communion under which the property could fall because:
– if the seller is married and if he is in a legal community of assets, both spouses must intervene and sign the deed before the Notary;
– if the property is owned by several different subjects (in this case, we speak of co-ownership): also, in this case, all the co-owners must participate in the deed of sale.
Furthermore, the seller’s and the buyer’s identity documents are required, such as the tax code, any extract of the marriage certificate or the certificate of free status or civil union and a copy of any marriage agreements or cohabitation contracts. If it concerns purchasing a first home, a copy of any deeds of purchase and sale and any invoice from the seller and/or the Notary will also be required to deduct registration tax or VAT (the so-called credit ‘tax).
It is the right of the buyer to ask to view the land register documents, which allow him to become aware of the situation of the house, its consistency represented in rooms, square meters, and parcels, as well as to know other data such as the boundaries and the cadastral income (information, these, contained in the historical survey). It is also necessary that, together with the plan (i.e. the scale drawing of the house), the seller also delivers the declaration of cadastral compliance, in which it is demonstrated that the real estate unit complies with the plan and the state of the places.
From a building point of view, the buyer can protect himself from abuses and discrepancies, such as jeopardizing the successful outcome of the sale, only if the seller delivers the administrative authorizations which have allowed the construction of a building and which are variously denominated according to the period in which it was built or the type of intervention.
Equally essential for the successful sale is the presence of the certificate of usability and the energy performance certificate.
The usability certificate attests that specific requirements have been met in terms of safety, habitability, health and hygiene and must be requested when the property was built after 2003 when renovations or elevations have been carried out on the property; when interventions have been carried out such as to make significant changes to the habitability/safety conditions. For construction or renovations carried out after 2016, the property’s usability is certified with a certified report. The owner must file this document at the one-stop shop for construction.
The energy performance certificate, also known as APE, is the document that indicates the energy consumption of the building and also gives ideas on how to improve its performance. Qualified technicians generally draw it up. It is valid for ten years and must be attached when the Notary signs, who will acknowledge that the seller has delivered the certificate to the buyer and the latter has read it.
When purchasing a condominium property, it is essential to check the condominium regulations to be fully informed of the condominiums’ rights and obligations in the common areas’ use and enjoyment. It is advisable to pay attention to what is indicated in the regulation since some prohibitions can significantly limit the use of the exclusive property being purchased.
To evaluate whether the economic request made by the seller is a fair price, a good point of reference is the O.M.I. database. (Real Estate Market Observatory) which, by recording the sales and rental values, contains data and coefficients based on which, in the real estate appraisal, the average value is developed. However, in addition to finding out about the average prices per square meter in the area where the house is located, to have a correct idea of the actual value of a property, it is necessary to consider whether it has those characteristics which affect the price, causing it to vary upwards or downwards. Decrease, such as the presence or absence of a lift, an independent heating system, a compliant electrical system, the number of toilets as well as the position of the apartment in the building (a property on the attic floor will have a more significant than a ground floor or basement apartment).
In this regard, it is good practice to carry out a thorough visit of the property and, if there are any doubts, have technicians assist you in checking, for example, in the presence of cracks, that there are no static problems or if the system is old, it may have lost its insulation capacity. Therefore it may be necessary to redo it. In addition, it would be advisable to check the floors, the state of doors and windows, if any, and find out about the services in the area, if it is well connected by public transport, if there are parks or schools and if it is difficult to find parking, in case the house does not have a parking space.
