Buying a House in Italy as a Dutch Buyer: 9% and No Bedenktijd
Article 7:2 BW gives three days from the moment the deed reaches your hands. Italy gives none, charges 9% on a second home, and keeps the caparra you paid.
Dutch law hands you a signed deed and then gives you three days to tear it up. Italian law hands you a signed contract and keeps the deposit you paid with it.
The three days come from article 2 of Book 7 of the Burgerlijk Wetboek, and they start when the deed reaches your hands, not when you sign. Italy has no comparable window. Its commitment lands at the contratto preliminare, the compromesso, and the transfer tax lands at 9% on a second home against 8% at home.
| What is being bought | Rate (%) | |
|---|---|---|
| Netherlands, other immovable property | 10.4% | |
| Italy, second home from a private seller | 9.0% | |
| Netherlands, home you will not live in yourself | 8.0% | |
| Italy, with prima casa relief | 2.0% | |
| Netherlands, home you will live in yourself | 2.0% |
What exactly does article 7:2 give you?
Written form, a physical handover and a three day exit, in that order. The Burgerlijk Wetboek requires the sale of a dwelling to be concluded in writing where the buyer is a natural person not acting in the exercise of a profession or business. The deed drawn up between the parties, or a copy of it, must then be placed in the buyer's hands, against a dated receipt if the seller asks for one. Three days run from that handover, and during them the buyer may dissolve the purchase.
The provision also closes the obvious loophole. Where a buyer uses the right and the same parties then strike a fresh bargain over the same property within six months, the article states plainly that the right does not arise a second time. And it reaches beyond bricks: the same rules apply to buying participation or membership rights that carry the right to occupy a dwelling.
So the Dutch protection is automatic, free, and deliberately hard to design around.
What stands in its place in Italy?
A negotiated contract and money that has already left your account. The compromesso is signed privately between buyer and seller, a caparra changes hands at that point, and no public official is present to witness any of it.
The Italian tax authorities treat that private step as a real one rather than a preliminary. Agenzia delle Entrate guidance shows tax charged on the caparra when the preliminare is registered being credited later against the sum owed at the deed. A document that is already generating tax receipts is not a draft.
The difference is not really about time. Dutch law hands you a right. Italian practice hands you a bargain, and the terms have to be read before signing rather than after.
Why the Dutch rate depends on what you say you will do with it
The Belastingdienst keys overdrachtsbelasting to intended use rather than to the type of building. It charges 2% on a home the buyer will occupy long term where the startersvrijstelling does not apply, 8% on a home the buyer will not occupy long term, naming second homes, holiday homes and homes bought to let, and 10.4% on other immovable property such as undeveloped plots and commercial premises.
That third rate has a trap in it that Dutch buyers meet at home rather than abroad. The Belastingdienst puts a garage bought at the same time as the house in the 8% column and a garage bought separately in the 10.4% one. Same garage, same buyer, four points apart.
Italy sorts the same purchase on a different question altogether. The rate turns on whether prima casa relief applies, not on what you intend to do with the rooms.
The one Italian election, and how long you have to make it
Not long. Under prezzo-valore a private buyer of residential property may have the registration tax worked out on the valore catastale, the cadastral value, rather than on the price agreed. The Agenzia delle Entrate has the buyer put that request to the notaio inside the purchase deed and refuses to let a later supplementary deed carry it. Miss the moment and the price stays the base for good.
The headline numbers around it are simple enough: 9% imposta di registro on a second home from a private seller, 2% where prima casa relief applies, an imposta ipotecaria and an imposta catastale of 50 euro each, and a 1,000 euro floor under the proportional tax. On a 400,000 euro purchase that is 36,000 euro in Italy against 32,000 euro of overdrachtsbelasting at the Dutch 8%, both worked out from the published rates.
Article 16 of the preleggi conditions a foreigner's civil rights in Italy on reciprocity, but the Consiglio Nazionale del Notariato puts European Union and European Economic Area citizens outside it, so a Dutch buyer never meets that check.
Who actually carries the transfer?
In the Netherlands, one office does. The notaris takes the transfer through to registration at the Kadaster and settles the money. Italy splits the same job across a private stage and a public one: buyer and seller bind themselves at the compromesso alone, and the notaio appears afterwards to draw the rogito, having taken a visura catastale from the Catasto and a visura ipotecaria from the mortgage and charges registers, then registers the deed with the Agenzia delle Entrate and the Catasto.
Reading that as a delay is the mistake. The notaio is thorough, but arrives after the decision rather than around it.
What Italy bills every year
Three recurring items, none of them tied to the price you paid: the spese condominiali of the building, TARI, the tassa sui rifiuti or waste charge, and IMU, the imposta municipale propria.
| Rate position | IMU rate (%) | |
|---|---|---|
| Minimum a comune may set | 0.00% | |
| National base rate | 0.86% | |
| Maximum a comune may set | 1.06% | |
| Maximum where it replaces the former TASI increase | 1.14% |
The Ministero dell'Economia e delle Finanze publishes those figures under legge 160/2019 at article 1 comma 754: 0.86% as the base for a home that is not the owner's main residence, 1.06% as the comune's ceiling, and 1.14% where the former TASI maggiorazione applied. Which figure you get is decided in the town hall.
What to settle before the compromesso
Treat the compromesso as the koopakte and the bedenktijd combined, since it does the work of both without giving you the second one. The codice fiscale, the register position and the prezzo-valore decision all need to be resolved on the near side of that signature.
Worth knowing before you go looking: Italy publishes no breakdown of buyers by nationality, so no official count of Dutch owners exists at the Osservatorio del Mercato Immobiliare, Banca d'Italia, ISTAT or the Consiglio Nazionale del Notariato.
We do not give buying or selling advice, and nothing here says whether an Italian property is worth buying. What the sources carry: written form, handover and a three day right to dissolve under article 7:2 of the Burgerlijk Wetboek, with no revival inside six months between the same parties, Dutch rates of 2%, 8% and 10.4% set by intended use, 9% imposta di registro on an Italian second home from a private seller against 2% with prima casa relief, a cadastral base only if claimed in the deed, and an annual IMU between 0 and 1.06%. A property you intend to rent out carries a separate regime, set out in the 2026 cedolare secca limits.
AiMYNDi reads the listing, the condominio accounts and the legal paperwork for a specific property, so a charge on the registry entry or a pending levy surfaces while the compromesso is still unsigned. You can see an example of what a report looks like first.
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