Property investment

Be careful with "usucapione" or squatter's rights. There are several threads on this topic such as this one: http://www.italymag.co.uk/community/post/squatters-rights Also, do a search using the word "usucapione" and you will find plenty of information.

Just having a lawyer present wont do anything.  An act of donation. if it were free, must be done in front of a notaio, and it costs.   Any transfer of property is a public act and taxes are due to the state.   The farmers may well have a right to the land, it all depends whether there is, or was, a contract of let.  If they are registered farmers, then they have first choice on the sale of the property, and can use this right in retrospect - though the law here is a bit complicated and one would need all the facts before it can be said whether they have rights.   What exactly did you do to transfer this property? 

Salve, When we bought our land we were told that adjacent landowners had a "DRITTO PRELAZIONE TERRENI" which they had a year to exercise. This meant that they had option to buy the land at the catastral value we had paid for it. We were told that as we had paid over the odds for agricultural land that it would be very unlikely that anyone would do this and that this statute was largely used to discourage farmers from selling land to each other for less than the market value. However just to be sure we would be prudent to wait a year before doing anything to improve the land. For example connecting services, planting olives, constructing agricultural buildings etc. therefore making the land more attractive or valuable & attracting attention. We were aided in implementing this advice by the financial crisis which has made us very prudent indeed.    In bocca al lupo

By far the safest way when buying land to secure its ownership is to have the people within any rights to purchase the land to sign away their rights to do so.. its standard practice and as an estate agency here i have never worked on a sale where this has been left to chance..  as regards use of land and the rights...  the main question to be asked is if the person is a registered farmer that works his own land then there can be problems..   however many registered farmers nowadays  are not full time farmers working their own land and so people with rights to take over land are becoming more limited... the historical reasons for the right of neighbors involved in farming to purchase land is based on the fact that farms were and still are quite small.. allowing neighboring farmers to add to their property would allow for more efficient farms and use of resources... paying over the odds for land is an estate agent talk to increase their commission by playing on the lack of knowledge of the purchaser and is easier say than putting in the research and visits to neighboring farmers to protect the purchase should it be needed.. often not.. how would anyone actually know that does not understand the system properly..  they would just accept the story that a person with land next door had the right as a registered farmer working his own land to purchase what you wanted.. and so it would be easy to suggest by paying above market value you would be safe...  

Even if you improved the land and after 11 months the farmer decided to excercise his right of prelazione he would still have to pay you the money you invested in the land - obviously having all the work 'fatturato' is important if this were the case.  He would also have to pay what you paid for the land - a good reason NEVER to underdeclare the saleprice - not only illegal but very stupid. 

There are two completely separate relevant issues on a sale of land. First the diritto di prelazione which is the right of adjoining farmers to buy land within 12 months of being notified and secondly usucapione which is adverse possession or squatters rights.For the first you need to know exactly who was notified of the sale and when and how and what they did if anything in reply and for the second exactly how long the farmers have used the land and what they have done. We had both problems when we bought our land and legal disputes are certainly not uncommon (though fortunately we avoided one). However I have no idea if the first problem applies to transfers of land to heirs. I would guess not but I would think the second issue could be important. I would get some legal advice locally.

Usucapione is a complicated right and would not be relevant in this case, as if the owners are known it would be virtually impossible to excercise the right, and it would be need to be transcribed.  In 'bad faith' you would uncontested use for 20 years.  Here it is more likely that that there is a right of common 'possession' or 'use' given that they have farmed the land for a continuous period.   If they are registered farmers, even without a agrarian contract they can force the cession of land in some cases.