Due Diligence: What Sinks a Purchase

Cadastral and urbanistic non-compliance

This is the single most common reason an Italian sale stalls. Older Tuscan farmhouses were frequently extended, divided or altered over decades, often informally, and what physically exists on the ground no longer matches what is registered at the Catasto, the cadastral registry, or authorised under the municipal building record. A notaio cannot complete a sale where this difformità exists and is unresolved.

The good news is that it is usually fixable, through a sanatoria that formally regularises the discrepancy — but it takes time and cost, and needs to be identified and priced in well before completion, not discovered at the notary’s table when it is far more expensive to unwind.

Genuine illegal building work

This is a different and more serious category from a simple cadastral mismatch: construction carried out without authorisation and never covered by any condono, or building amnesty. Depending on severity, this can carry demolition orders or standing fines, and can render a property essentially unsellable until resolved. Distinguishing an easily regularised paperwork gap from a genuine abuso edilizio is precisely the kind of technical judgement that belongs to a qualified geometra or lawyer, not a viewing.

Inheritance and ownership disputes

Italian inheritance law frequently leaves a property in comunione ereditaria — joint ownership among multiple heirs — sometimes for a generation or more after the original owner’s death. Every co-owner must consent to a sale. A missing signature, an estranged sibling, or an heir who was never properly informed the property was for sale can stop a transaction outright, sometimes after months of otherwise smooth progress. Verifying that the seller who signs the preliminary contract genuinely has the authority to sell the whole property is a foundational step, not a formality.

Liens, mortgages and other encumbrances

A property can carry a mortgage or other charge from a current or previous owner, sometimes unresolved. This is confirmed through a formal search of the property and mortgage registries, and any charge found needs to be cleared, or its resolution guaranteed, before or at the moment of the final deed. Boundary and access questions belong in the same category — rural properties frequently lack precise boundaries matching a modern survey, and access via a shared or third-party track should carry a documented right of way, not an assumption based on how things have always been done.

Why this belongs before the offer, not after

Every one of these issues is far cheaper to discover, and to walk away from or negotiate around, before a preliminary contract is signed than after. This is the entire logic of independent due diligence: not to slow a purchase down, but to make sure that when a buyer does commit, they are committing to a property that can actually be sold to them cleanly. We build this review into the search itself, so a property is understood, not just admired, before an offer is ever made.