Condominium fees in Italy: the part that transfers with the flat
Quick answer: Buying an apartment in an Italian condominio makes you liable for the seller’s unpaid charges covering the current management year and the one before it. That liability is statutory, it is not negotiable at the deed, and the administrator can demand the money from you. Everything else on this page follows from that single rule.
Most foreign buyers treat condominium charges as a monthly running cost to check at the end of the process. In Italy they are a due diligence item, because unlike almost every other debt attached to a property, part of this one follows the flat rather than the person.
The liability that transfers, in the exact words of the rule
Article 63, fourth paragraph, of the provisions implementing the Civil Code says that whoever takes over the rights of a condominium owner is jointly liable with them for contributions relating to the current year and the previous one.
Three consequences of that sentence matter more than any figure.
It makes no distinction between ordinary and extraordinary charges. A EUR 40,000 facade programme voted last year and unpaid by the seller falls inside the same rule as the unpaid cleaning bill.
The “year” is the management year, not the calendar year. It runs 365 days from a date fixed by the assembly or written into the regolamento. A building whose year runs from 1 July exposes a buyer completing in March to charges reaching back to July of the year before last. Reading it as a calendar rule is how people arrive at the wrong number.
Joint liability means the administrator chooses who to pursue. They are not obliged to chase the seller first. The demand goes to whoever is easiest to collect from, which is the owner on the register today. Your remedy is to sue the seller afterwards, in Italy, in Italian, over a sum that may not justify it.
The seller does not escape either: they remain jointly bound until the transfer is formally notified to the administrator. That notification is worth confirming rather than assuming.
Millesimi: your share and your vote in one number
Every unit in an Italian condominio carries a share expressed in millesimi, thousandths of the whole building. The table of millesimi is a formal document, usually annexed to the regolamento.
The share is calculated from the unit’s floor area, height, position and other structural characteristics. It is deliberately not based on use: a top-floor owner pays their millesimi share of the ground-floor entrance whether they cross it once a day or once a year.
Millesimi do two jobs at once. They set your proportion of every shared cost, and they set the weight of your vote at the assembly. A buyer with 45 millesimi in a small building has real influence; the same buyer in a 200-unit block has almost none, and should read the last three years of minutes accordingly.
Two cost categories are apportioned by statute rather than by millesimi alone. Under article 1124 of the Civil Code, stairs and lifts are maintained and replaced at 50% in proportion to the value of each unit and 50% in proportion to each floor’s height above ground. A top-floor flat therefore pays materially more of a lift replacement than a first-floor flat of identical size, and the gap on a 6-storey building is substantial. Centralised heating follows metered consumption where thermostatic valves and heat meters are installed, which the 2016 energy rules made compulsory on most centralised systems.
Ordinary against extraordinary, and who pays which
Ordinary charges keep the building running: cleaning, lift maintenance, insurance, shared electricity and water, gardening, the administrator’s fee. They are budgeted annually, called quarterly in most buildings, and reconciled at year end against actual spend.
Extraordinary charges are capital works: a roof, a facade, a lift replacement, structural repairs, a heating conversion. These are approved by resolution at an assembly, with majorities that vary by the type of work.
The question that decides real money is which side of a sale a given cost falls on, and the answer is not the invoice date. The obligation attaches to whoever owned the unit when the assembly resolved to carry out the work, not when the builder was paid. A resolution passed six months before your purchase, for works starting six months after it, is the seller’s cost in principle and yours in practice if it goes unpaid, under the two-year rule above.
This is why the minutes matter as much as the accounts. A building with healthy accounts and a resolution passed last spring for a EUR 300,000 facade programme is not a building with low charges. It is a building with a bill that has not arrived yet.
What to obtain before you commit
Ask for these in writing, before the compromesso rather than before the rogito, because after the compromesso you are committed.
| Document | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Administrator’s certificate of no arrears | Whether the seller owes anything, and how much of it can land on you |
| Three years of approved accounts | The real running cost, against whatever the listing claims |
| Minutes of the last three assemblies | Works resolved but not yet invoiced, and disputes in progress |
| The regolamento di condominio | Whether it is contractual, and what it prohibits |
| The table of millesimi | Your actual share, which sometimes differs from the agent’s estimate |
| The current year’s budget | What is already committed for the year you are buying into |
The certificate of no arrears is the one people skip and the one the statute makes indispensable. A notaio will not obtain it on their own initiative unless asked, and the seller has no incentive to volunteer it.
The regolamento, and what it can stop you doing
There are two kinds of condominium regulation and the difference decides whether a short-let plan survives.
An assembly regulation is adopted by majority and governs use of common parts. It cannot generally restrict what an owner does inside their own property.
A contractual regulation is accepted by every owner in their own deed and restricts private use: a ban on tourist letting, on professional use, or on animals. Where such a clause exists and has been correctly transcribed, a later assembly majority cannot simply remove it, and a buyer takes the flat subject to it.
For anyone buying with a letting plan, this is the document to read first. A CIN registration and a comune that permits short lets are worth nothing if the building’s own deed-level regulation forbids it. The wider licensing picture is in Italy holiday let licensing.
The administrator, and buildings that do not have one
An amministratore di condominio is compulsory where the building has more than eight owners. Their duties include keeping the accounts, calling the annual assembly, collecting contributions, and maintaining the condominium register.
In smaller buildings the owners may run it themselves. That sounds cheaper and complicates a purchase considerably: there is no formal accounting, no certificate anyone is authorised to issue, and no minute book. Establishing what is owed then means asking the other owners directly, which a foreign buyer is poorly placed to do. Treat a building without an administrator as requiring more diligence rather than less.
The deadlines and thresholds worth knowing
Several of the rules that protect an owner are expressed as fixed periods, and a non-resident who does not know them tends to find out too late.
Notice of the assembly must reach every owner at least 5 days before an ordinary meeting. Given international post and the time needed to appoint a proxy, ask the administrator to send convocations by email as well, and confirm they hold the right address.
The administrator’s appointment runs for 1 year and renews tacitly for a further year unless replaced. That means an administrator nobody is happy with can remain in place for 24 months before the question is forced, and it is why the minutes of the meeting that appointed them are worth reading.
Millesimi thresholds convert the majority rules into numbers you can check against the table. A third of the building is 334 millesimi, which is 33.4% of it; half is 501, or 50.1%; the qualified majority used for innovations is 667, or 66.7%. Reading minutes means adding the millesimi of those who voted in favour and comparing. A resolution passed below its threshold is challengeable.
Challenging a resolution has a short window: 30 days, running from the meeting for those who attended and from receipt of the minutes for those who did not. A non-resident who reads the minutes three months later has lost the right regardless of the merits, which is the strongest practical argument for holding a proxy.
Arrears become enforceable immediately, and suspension from separable services becomes available after 6 months, as set out above. Between those two, an owner who ignores a demand for 2 quarters has already passed both thresholds.
What it actually costs to run
Charges vary far more by building than by city, and the drivers are predictable: a lift, a porter, central heating, a garden, and the age of the fabric.
| Building type | Typical annual charge, two-bed |
|---|---|
| Small walk-up, no lift, no shared services | EUR 600 to EUR 1,200 |
| Same building, per month | EUR 50 to EUR 100 |
| Mid-size block with lift | EUR 900 to EUR 1,800 |
| Building with porter, garden or central heating | EUR 1,800 to EUR 3,500 |
| Serviced or resort development with pool | EUR 3,000 upward |
These bands come from listing and management data rather than from a survey. The number that matters is the one in the last three years of approved accounts for the specific building, which is why the document list above exists.
Two costs sit outside the condominium and are often confused with it. IMU, the municipal property tax on a second home, is owed by you directly and is covered in IMU and Italian property tax. TARI, the waste charge, is billed by the comune to the occupier, and in some buildings the administrator collects it and in others it does not.
What happens if the charges go unpaid
The enforcement route is faster than most foreign owners expect, and it is worth knowing on both sides of the transaction: it is what the administrator will use against you if the seller’s arrears land on your door, and what they would use against you later.
Under the same article 63, an administrator may obtain a decreto ingiuntivo immediatamente esecutivo, an immediately enforceable payment order, without waiting for assembly authorisation. There is no preliminary vote to slow it down and no requirement to prove the debt in ordinary proceedings first. Challenging it afterwards is possible and does not suspend the enforcement.
Where arrears run beyond six months, the administrator may also suspend the defaulting owner from shared services capable of separate enjoyment. In practice that means things which can be cut off to one unit without affecting the others: centralised heating and hot water are the usual examples, and a lift generally is not, because it cannot be denied to one flat alone.
The administrator is not merely permitted to act, they are obliged to. Article 1129 requires them to begin recovery within 6 months of the close of the financial year in which the debt arose, unless the assembly expressly exempts them. An administrator who lets arrears drift is in breach of their own duty, which is a useful thing to know when asking why a building carries them.
Two things follow for a buyer. If the seller’s arrears reach you under the two-year rule, the demand can arrive as an enforceable order rather than as a letter inviting discussion. And if a building’s accounts show significant arrears across several units, that is a signal about the building rather than about one neighbour: it usually means a recent extraordinary works bill that owners are struggling with, and it will reappear as a further call for funds.
The assembly, and what majorities decide what
Extraordinary works are not decided by the administrator. They are voted at the assembly, and the majority required rises with the significance of the decision.
| Decision | Broad requirement |
|---|---|
| Ordinary administration, approving accounts | A majority of those present representing at least a third of the building |
| Appointing or removing the administrator | A majority of those present representing at least half the building |
| Significant extraordinary works | A majority of those present representing at least half the building |
| Innovations that change how common parts are used | A larger qualified majority, and some changes require unanimity |
Read those as the shape of the rule rather than as legal advice for a specific vote, since the Civil Code sets different thresholds for different categories and a contractual regolamento can raise them. The practical point for a foreign buyer is simpler: a works programme you consider unaffordable can be approved without your vote and become your debt. The defence is reading the minutes before you buy and holding a proxy afterwards.
Being a non-resident owner in an Italian building
Two practical points follow from living somewhere else.
You will not attend the assembly. Meetings are held in person, in Italian, usually on a weekday evening, and they decide extraordinary works that can run into tens of thousands. You may appoint a proxy, a delega, and in most buildings any owner may hold one, though the regolamento can cap how many any single person holds. Choosing a proxy who will actually read the papers is worth more than any clause in the purchase contract.
Payment logistics are your problem. Charges are normally collected by SEPA transfer or direct debit against an Italian account, and arrears accrue quickly when a foreign bank blocks a standing instruction. Setting up the mandate is part of completing the purchase, not an afterthought.
Where this fits in the purchase
Condominium diligence sits alongside the building and planning checks rather than after them, because both can kill a deal and both take time to answer. The wider sequence is in due diligence before the compromesso, the planning side in abusi edilizi and unpermitted works, and the running costs of ownership generally in Italian property management costs. What the notaio does and does not check on your behalf is in the role of the notaio.
Sources
Article 63 of the provisions implementing the Italian Civil Code, fourth paragraph, on the joint liability of a successor in title for contributions relating to the current and preceding year; Italian Civil Code provisions on condominium administration, majorities and the compulsory appointment of an administrator above eight owners. Checked 6 September 2026.
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes, partly. Under article 63 of the implementing provisions of the Civil Code, a buyer is jointly liable with the seller for contributions relating to the current year and the one before it. The administrator can pursue either of you for those sums, and your only recourse is against the seller afterwards.
No, and this catches people out. The year is the management year, a period of 365 days beginning on the date the assembly or the condominium regulation sets. Buying in March can therefore expose you to charges going back further than a calendar reading suggests.
Thousandths. Each unit is assigned a share of the building expressed out of 1,000, based on its size and characteristics rather than on how much anyone uses the common parts. Millesimi determine both your share of the charges and the weight of your vote at the assembly.
Ordinary charges cover running the building: cleaning, lifts, insurance, the administrator's fee, shared utilities. Extraordinary charges cover capital works such as a roof, a facade or a lift replacement. Extraordinary works are voted at an assembly, and the resolution date rather than the invoice date usually decides who pays.
It can, if the regolamento is contractual and expressly prohibits it. A simple majority resolution generally cannot introduce such a ban, but a clause accepted by every owner in their deed can. Read the regolamento before assuming a short-let plan is available.
An administrator is compulsory where the building has more than eight owners. Below that the owners may manage it themselves, which in practice means no accounts, no certificate and a much harder job establishing what is owed before you buy.
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