from 1 July any act of sale must include a certificate of energy saving which every house in Italy will eventually need and should be displayed next to the numero civico of the property.
The ipoteca is the formal legal imposing of a charge against property, so a mutuo ipotecario is what we consider a normal mortgage. The difference in ITaly is that the ipoteca is a public act stipulated by a notary, (which adds to your purchase costs), and is placed on the property not the person. This means that you can sell a property with the mortgage attached to it, (which is why we all run round doing visure ipotecarie the day before the act of sale to make sure there is no debt on the property). Ipoteche can be placed on your property by third parties - such as debt collection agencies and banks, and sometimes you dont know about until you decide to sell. If you buy a property 'ipotecata' then the owners should clear the debt before the atto, if this is not possible then on the day of the atto you all troop off to the bank - seller, buyer and notary and clear the debt there and then with a slice of the price paid by the buyer. There is no other way to do this, so bear in mind that other suggestions are dangerous to your financial health!
There is no problem for any foreigner to buy property in Italy. For a foreigner to get a mortgage however, is more difficult. Any mortgage in ITaly is subject to a ceiling of 80% of the value of the property, and are calculated according to income and so on. THe problem for a foreigner is having to have all the relevant documentation in Italian - and it is a mountain of paperwork that needs to be translated. Also there are no foreign equivalents for many of the documents needed - you will need for example, 2 years of payslips, in Italian. It isoften easier getting an international mortgage through a broker. However, Barclays do do mortgages now in Italy - and the forms are in English, though they have the same lending criteria as Italian banks. If a euro mortgage isnt important, it may be easier trying to get an American mortgage in dollars on a Italian property. Which ever way you decide to go, it will be frustrating and expensive.
Or you will have to go and stand in a queue and ask for the discount..... but most comunes will automatically give you the discount as they know its a second home.
The qualification for 'prima casa' is that the house will be your prima casa - ie that you dont have another in Italy. On that basis you qualify - but it brings with it other ramifications. If you take prima casa incentives you will need to take residency within 18 months of the date of purchase. You will not have to pay ICI (at the moment) and get a small discount on your electricity bills. You will pay 3% of the rateable value of the property in tax at the moment of purchase and a few hundred in stamp duty and registration - as flat fees. If you buy as a second home you will pay 7+2+1% of rateable value, but have no requirement to be resident in Italy. You will pay ICI, but you will get a reduction on your rubbish collection taxes. So your dilemma is whether you take residency to save some money payable at act. If you are planning to live here full time, or more than 183 days a year then residency is a requirement. If you have a comune that insist on health insurance, you will have expenses to qualify for residence and you must wrigh these against the money saved in taxes. If you are here for less than 183 days a year in various trips then you have no legal requirement to be resident in Italy and therefore fiscally resident in Italy with all that that entails with tax returns etc. If you are not spending a small fortune on a property then better to avoid Italian bureaucracy and take it as a second home, in my opinion.
Well, regarding foundations - when i did mine, I was advised to bung down 20cm of reinforced concrete base, I did have little walls and a floor - and it had a cotto floor - so not the cheapest. But it all depends what you want and how you do it. I suppose if you left it lets say lawn for the floor then you could do without permissions... I was always told that if a building had a bolt in it then it was temporary, in the sense it could be dismantled. However, recently even a caravan has been classed as permanent and you need a licence to put one in a cantiere. A wooden shed is permanent in come cases but a bloody great Dutch barn is temporary. It all depends - but its worth doing it properly and choosing well would bring down the cost substantially.
You had to provide ID/passport at internet cafe's for the law on terrorism. That law is now being rescinded and it will not be necessary any more. The idea was that if someone went on internet writing 'hot words' like bomb, parliament, kill everyone etc - the services could pick them up and find out who they were. Letting your home you are obliged to photocopy passports and present them to the police anyway. Whether you have to block your internet access is unlikely - you are providing a service, if that service is abused it is not your fault. What is important is that you can prove it wasnt you trying to find out how to make a fertiliser bomb on Friday afternoon at 4!
Whether it is in wood or tiled may or may not affect the 'temporaneita' of the structure - but basically a loggia is a permanent structure and you will need a concessione to do it. You will have a metrage that is around 30% of your overall cuabtura that you can use without running into problems, as it is technically a verandah. Again, this all depends where you live. it will cost the same as an extension of the same area but without the windows....nd you need a professionista to do all the paperwork.
If it is a second house then there is usually a small discount. Not on prime case, unless its tiny. Where I live, as the nearest cassonetta is more than 1km away I get a large discount on the tax as there is no collection. Other comunes think that if you can afford two homes you can afford the tax - not unreasonable.
Just to follow on from Sebastiano - since 13 th August any payment over 2500 cannot be made in cash and must be traceable. Over 3000 and you must send the fattura by certified email. More paperwork for us all - but always fewer and fewer guardie di finanza to check up on it all - so it all becomes a bit pointless. The problem with publicising tax returns is that they are full of personl info - what you pay for doctors etc, as well as how much you give to charity/the church etc - and this is against all the privacy laws. You would have to cherry pick what you publish and that becomes a huge job of sifting information and so on. Meanwhile the cardinals tell us that asking the church to pay their taxes is a move orchestrated by communists and freemasons to drag the church down - Perhaps I should join the masons?
Over 60% of italians would welcome it according to Il Corriere. I prefer the plan to put tax evaders in jail - shame the limit is 3 million though - and Berlo says that this is 'socialism' - that would be the punishing of criminals or just punishing him and his mates? The manovra is a mess- nothing to stimulate the economy, nothing immediate - all drip drip and then forgotten because there will be elections - so prepare for the next attack on Italy and manovra no 4 before Xmas....
Comments posted
The ipoteca is the formal legal imposing of a charge against property, so a mutuo ipotecario is what we consider a normal mortgage. The difference in ITaly is that the ipoteca is a public act stipulated by a notary, (which adds to your purchase costs), and is placed on the property not the person. This means that you can sell a property with the mortgage attached to it, (which is why we all run round doing visure ipotecarie the day before the act of sale to make sure there is no debt on the property). Ipoteche can be placed on your property by third parties - such as debt collection agencies and banks, and sometimes you dont know about until you decide to sell. If you buy a property 'ipotecata' then the owners should clear the debt before the atto, if this is not possible then on the day of the atto you all troop off to the bank - seller, buyer and notary and clear the debt there and then with a slice of the price paid by the buyer. There is no other way to do this, so bear in mind that other suggestions are dangerous to your financial health!
There is no problem for any foreigner to buy property in Italy. For a foreigner to get a mortgage however, is more difficult. Any mortgage in ITaly is subject to a ceiling of 80% of the value of the property, and are calculated according to income and so on. THe problem for a foreigner is having to have all the relevant documentation in Italian - and it is a mountain of paperwork that needs to be translated. Also there are no foreign equivalents for many of the documents needed - you will need for example, 2 years of payslips, in Italian. It isoften easier getting an international mortgage through a broker. However, Barclays do do mortgages now in Italy - and the forms are in English, though they have the same lending criteria as Italian banks. If a euro mortgage isnt important, it may be easier trying to get an American mortgage in dollars on a Italian property. Which ever way you decide to go, it will be frustrating and expensive.
Or you will have to go and stand in a queue and ask for the discount..... but most comunes will automatically give you the discount as they know its a second home.
The qualification for 'prima casa' is that the house will be your prima casa - ie that you dont have another in Italy. On that basis you qualify - but it brings with it other ramifications. If you take prima casa incentives you will need to take residency within 18 months of the date of purchase. You will not have to pay ICI (at the moment) and get a small discount on your electricity bills. You will pay 3% of the rateable value of the property in tax at the moment of purchase and a few hundred in stamp duty and registration - as flat fees. If you buy as a second home you will pay 7+2+1% of rateable value, but have no requirement to be resident in Italy. You will pay ICI, but you will get a reduction on your rubbish collection taxes. So your dilemma is whether you take residency to save some money payable at act. If you are planning to live here full time, or more than 183 days a year then residency is a requirement. If you have a comune that insist on health insurance, you will have expenses to qualify for residence and you must wrigh these against the money saved in taxes. If you are here for less than 183 days a year in various trips then you have no legal requirement to be resident in Italy and therefore fiscally resident in Italy with all that that entails with tax returns etc. If you are not spending a small fortune on a property then better to avoid Italian bureaucracy and take it as a second home, in my opinion.
Well, regarding foundations - when i did mine, I was advised to bung down 20cm of reinforced concrete base, I did have little walls and a floor - and it had a cotto floor - so not the cheapest. But it all depends what you want and how you do it. I suppose if you left it lets say lawn for the floor then you could do without permissions... I was always told that if a building had a bolt in it then it was temporary, in the sense it could be dismantled. However, recently even a caravan has been classed as permanent and you need a licence to put one in a cantiere. A wooden shed is permanent in come cases but a bloody great Dutch barn is temporary. It all depends - but its worth doing it properly and choosing well would bring down the cost substantially.
You had to provide ID/passport at internet cafe's for the law on terrorism. That law is now being rescinded and it will not be necessary any more. The idea was that if someone went on internet writing 'hot words' like bomb, parliament, kill everyone etc - the services could pick them up and find out who they were. Letting your home you are obliged to photocopy passports and present them to the police anyway. Whether you have to block your internet access is unlikely - you are providing a service, if that service is abused it is not your fault. What is important is that you can prove it wasnt you trying to find out how to make a fertiliser bomb on Friday afternoon at 4!
Whether it is in wood or tiled may or may not affect the 'temporaneita' of the structure - but basically a loggia is a permanent structure and you will need a concessione to do it. You will have a metrage that is around 30% of your overall cuabtura that you can use without running into problems, as it is technically a verandah. Again, this all depends where you live. it will cost the same as an extension of the same area but without the windows....nd you need a professionista to do all the paperwork.
If it is a second house then there is usually a small discount. Not on prime case, unless its tiny. Where I live, as the nearest cassonetta is more than 1km away I get a large discount on the tax as there is no collection. Other comunes think that if you can afford two homes you can afford the tax - not unreasonable.
Just to follow on from Sebastiano - since 13 th August any payment over 2500 cannot be made in cash and must be traceable. Over 3000 and you must send the fattura by certified email. More paperwork for us all - but always fewer and fewer guardie di finanza to check up on it all - so it all becomes a bit pointless. The problem with publicising tax returns is that they are full of personl info - what you pay for doctors etc, as well as how much you give to charity/the church etc - and this is against all the privacy laws. You would have to cherry pick what you publish and that becomes a huge job of sifting information and so on. Meanwhile the cardinals tell us that asking the church to pay their taxes is a move orchestrated by communists and freemasons to drag the church down - Perhaps I should join the masons?
Over 60% of italians would welcome it according to Il Corriere. I prefer the plan to put tax evaders in jail - shame the limit is 3 million though - and Berlo says that this is 'socialism' - that would be the punishing of criminals or just punishing him and his mates? The manovra is a mess- nothing to stimulate the economy, nothing immediate - all drip drip and then forgotten because there will be elections - so prepare for the next attack on Italy and manovra no 4 before Xmas....