Buying a House in Italy as a German Buyer: 9% Registration Tax

German law makes a property handshake worth nothing at all. Italian law lets one bind you, in a room with no public officer in it.

Three German statutes push a purchase through a notary before it means anything. Italy commits both sides at the contratto preliminare, the compromesso, a private contract signed weeks earlier. The tax gap runs the same direction: 3.5% is the federal German rate, North Rhine-Westphalia takes 6.5%, and an Italian second home costs 9%.

Tax charged on the price when a home changes hands

What is being bought	Rate (%)
Italy, second home from a private seller		9.0%
North Rhine-Westphalia		6.5%
Germany, federal rate in the statute		3.5%
Italy, with prima casa relief		2.0%

Paragraph 11 of the Grunderwerbsteuergesetz, the real property transfer tax act, puts Grunderwerbsteuer at 3.5%. Each Land may depart from that figure under article 105(2a) of the Grundgesetz, and Finanzamt NRW states that North Rhine-Westphalia has charged 6.5% on every contract notarised since 1 January 2015.

The three German locks that Italy does not use

German law will not let a land purchase happen privately, and it says so three times over.

Paragraph 311b(1) of the Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch, the civil code, requires notarielle Beurkundung, notarial certification, for any contract obliging one side to transfer or acquire land. Paragraph 925(1) of the same code then requires the Auflassung, the agreement on the transfer itself, to be declared with both parties present at the same time before a competent authority, and makes every notary competent to receive it. Paragraph 13(1) of the Beurkundungsgesetz, the certification act, adds that the record has to be read aloud to the parties in the notary's presence, approved by them and signed in their own hand.

Nothing in that chain has an Italian counterpart at the moment of commitment. The compromesso is signed between the parties, with a caparra handed over, and no public officer needs to witness it. The Agenzia delle Entrate treats that private contract as a taxable event in its own right: tax charged on the caparra when the preliminare is registered is later set against the bill falling due at the deed. A German buyer waiting for a reading that never comes has already committed.

Who is allowed to look at the register?

In Germany, not simply anyone. Paragraph 12(1) of the Grundbuchordnung, the land register act, opens the Grundbuch to a person who demonstrates a berechtigtes Interesse, a legitimate interest, and extends the same access to the deeds a register entry refers to.

Italy hands that work to the notaio, who pulls a visura catastale from the Catasto record and a visura ipotecaria from the mortgage and charges registers before drawing the rogito, then files the completed deed with the Agenzia delle Entrate and the Catasto. The searching is equivalent. The timing is not. German checks land before the reading that binds you; Italian checks land after the compromesso already has.

What the 9% is actually charged on

The contract price, unless you say otherwise inside the deed itself.

Where a Cologne flat costs 6.5% in Grunderwerbsteuer, the Agenzia delle Entrate takes 9% on an Italian second home from a private seller, or 2% under prima casa relief, and adds an imposta ipotecaria and an imposta catastale of 50 euro apiece. It also sets a floor: the proportional registration tax cannot fall below 1,000 euro. On a 300,000 euro purchase the 9% works out to 27,000 euro, against 19,500 euro at the North Rhine-Westphalia rate on the same price. Both are arithmetic on published rates.

There is one lever, and it closes fast. Under prezzo-valore a private buyer of residential property may have the registration tax computed on the valore catastale, the cadastral value, instead of the sum paid. The Agenzia delle Entrate requires the buyer to ask the notaio for it inside the purchase deed, and rules out adding it by a later supplementary deed. Ask on the day or lose it permanently.

One Italian rule a German buyer can put aside entirely: article 16 of the preleggi conditions a foreigner's civil rights on reciprocity, and the Consiglio Nazionale del Notariato places European Union and European Economic Area citizens outside that condition.

What replaces the Hausgeld paperwork?

Nothing with the same statutory guarantees behind it.

Paragraph 28 of the Wohnungseigentumsgesetz, the condominium act, gives a German owner a fixed document set. The Verwalter draws up a Wirtschaftsplan for each calendar year, the owners resolve on the Vorschüsse and the reserves, a Jahresabrechnung follows once the year closes, and a Vermögensbericht setting out the reserves and the community's main assets goes to every owner. That is the paper trail a German buyer is used to demanding before signing.

An Italian purchase brings three running costs instead: the spese condominiali of the building, TARI, which is the tassa sui rifiuti or waste charge, and IMU. IMU is the imposta municipale propria, and the rate is a local decision rather than a national one.

IMU on a second home: what a comune may set

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%

Under legge 160/2019 at article 1 comma 754, the Ministero dell'Economia e delle Finanze publishes 0.86% as the base for a home that is not the owner's main residence, 1.06% as the highest a comune may go, and 1.14% where the old TASI maggiorazione was in play. Which end of that band applies is a question about the comune, not about the flat.

What to settle before the compromesso

Work backwards from the moment that binds. In Germany the reading is the checkpoint and everything can be examined up to it. In Italy the checkpoint sits at the compromesso, so the codice fiscale, the register searches and the prezzo-valore decision all belong before it.

One gap is worth knowing about: no Italian body counts buyers by nationality, so there is no official figure for how many Germans own in Italy. The Osservatorio del Mercato Immobiliare at the Agenzia delle Entrate does not publish it, and neither do 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: notarial form required by paragraphs 311b(1) and 925(1) BGB and a reading required by paragraph 13(1) BeurkG, none of which guards the compromesso, Grundbuch access gated on legitimate interest under paragraph 12(1) GBO, 6.5% in North Rhine-Westphalia against 9% in Italy, 50 euro each for the ipotecaria and the catastale, a cadastral base available only if claimed in the deed, and an annual IMU the comune sets between 0 and 1.06%. Letting it out later brings its own rulebook, and the 2026 cedolare secca limits are where that starts.

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.