Buying a House in Italy as a Swedish Buyer: 1.5% Becomes 9%
Sweden charges 1.5% stämpelskatt and nothing on a bostadsrätt. Italy charges 9% on a second home, taxed on the price unless you ask for the cadastral value.
Sweden looks at two numbers and taxes the bigger one. Italy looks at two numbers and lets a private buyer choose the smaller one.
Lantmäteriet works out stämpelskatt on whichever is higher, the purchase price or the previous year's taxeringsvärde, and charges 1.5% plus 825 kronor. Italy charges 9% on a second home, but prezzo-valore lets a private buyer put the cadastral value in place of the price. The rates run six times apart; the bases run in opposite directions.
| What is being bought | Rate (%) | |
|---|---|---|
| Italy, second home from a private seller | 9.0% | |
| Italy, with prima casa relief | 2.0% | |
| Sweden, house or other real property | 1.5% | |
| Sweden, bostadsrätt | 0.0% |
Two tax bases pointing opposite ways
This is the part worth understanding before anything else, since it is the only place where Italy is structurally more generous than Sweden.
Lantmäteriet, the Swedish mapping and land registration authority, applies the 1.5% under the stämpelskattelag (1984:404) to the greater of the price paid and the previous year's assessed value, rounded down to whole thousands. Paying under the assessment does not reduce the bill.
Italy inverts that. The Agenzia delle Entrate allows a private individual buying residential property, and not acting in a commercial, artistic or professional capacity, to have imposta di registro computed on the valore catastale instead of on the sum agreed. That mechanism is called prezzo-valore, and where the cadastral figure sits below the price it is the cadastral figure that gets taxed.
The catch is a deadline rather than a qualification. The request goes to the notaio in the purchase deed itself, and the Agenzia delle Entrate will not accept it in a supplementary deed drawn up later. A Swedish buyer used to a base nobody can argue with has to remember that the Italian base is a choice, and one that expires at the signing table.
Sweden has no notary at all. What does the notaio add?
An officer serving both sides, and a set of searches, both arriving at the end. The notaio draws the rogito, having first taken a visura catastale from the Catasto record and a visura ipotecaria from the registers holding mortgages and charges, and afterwards files the deed with the Agenzia delle Entrate and the Catasto.
Sweden distributes that work differently. Nobody reads the contract to you and nobody is appointed to check the property on your behalf. The buyer applies to Lantmäteriet for lagfart, the registration of title, and pays the 1.5% plus 825 kronor at that point.
The binding moment is where Swedish habits transfer well. Swedish law commits the parties at the written köpekontrakt, under chapter 4 section 1 of Jordabalken, with nothing resembling a cooling-off period. Italy commits them at the contratto preliminare, the compromesso, signed with a caparra. Both countries put the weight on a private contract and leave registration as the consequence. What changes is that Italy adds a public officer afterwards, which can make the compromesso feel provisional when it is not. The Agenzia delle Entrate already charges tax on the caparra when the preliminare is registered, and credits it against the sum falling due at the deed.
Why does a bostadsrätt attract no tax at all?
What a Swedish buyer owns in a bostadsrätt is a share in a förening, not the flat. Lantmäteriet therefore has no title to register and no stämpelskatt to collect, which is why the fourth row of the chart above sits at zero.
An Italian apartment is real property held in a condominio. The 9% falls on it exactly as it falls on a detached house, and the fee structure a Swedish buyer associates with cooperative living does not translate into an exemption. Where a Swedish buyer would open the förening's årsredovisning to judge the association's debt before bidding, an Italian purchase puts the equivalent question inside the condominio's own accounts, and the recurring bill arrives as spese condominiali.
What does the purchase actually cost?
Nine per cent, two fixed charges, and a floor. The Agenzia delle Entrate puts imposta di registro at 9% on a second home bought from a private seller and 2% under prima casa relief, adds an imposta ipotecaria and an imposta catastale of 50 euro each, and states the proportional registration tax can never come in below 1,000 euro.
Set against a Swedish purchase, the arithmetic is stark. A 3,000,000 kronor house attracts 45,000 kronor of stämpelskatt plus the 825 kronor fee. A 300,000 euro Italian second home attracts 27,000 euro before the two 50 euro lines. Both figures are calculated from the published rates rather than lifted from a table.
Article 16 of the preleggi makes a foreigner's civil rights in Italy conditional on reciprocity, but the Consiglio Nazionale del Notariato places European Union and European Economic Area citizens outside that condition, so no Swedish buyer will meet it.
What arrives every year afterwards
IMU, the imposta municipale propria, plus TARI, the tassa sui rifiuti or waste charge, and the building's spese condominiali. The IMU rate is decided locally, inside limits set nationally.
| 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% |
Legge 160/2019 at article 1 comma 754 fixes the structure, and the Ministero dell'Economia e delle Finanze publishes the figures: 0.86% as the base on a home that is not the owner's main residence, 1.06% as the highest a comune may reach, and 1.14% where the old TASI maggiorazione was applied. A comune may also set it at zero.
What to settle before the compromesso
Two Swedish reflexes serve you here and one does not. Trusting the contract over the registration is right. Expecting the tax base to be handed to you is wrong, so get the codice fiscale early and decide the prezzo-valore question before you reach the notaio's table rather than at it.
One thing you will not be able to look up: Italy publishes no breakdown of property buyers by nationality, so no official count of Swedish owners exists. The Osservatorio del Mercato Immobiliare at the Agenzia delle Entrate does not produce one, and nor 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: 1.5% plus 825 kronor at Lantmäteriet on the higher of price or assessed value, nothing at all on a bostadsrätt, 9% imposta di registro on an Italian second home from a private seller against 2% with prima casa relief, 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%. Renting the place out puts you under a different set of rules again, which the 2026 cedolare secca limits set out.
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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