Notaries

The role is misunderstood by nearly every foreign buyer, and the misunderstanding is expensive. A notaio is appointed to a district and exercises a public function: the deed they draw is a public act, and the state relies on them to have checked the register, established identity and capacity, and recorded the transaction correctly. What follows from that is the part buyers find hard to accept: the notary is impartial by design. They will not tell you the price is too high, they will not negotiate a condition for you, and they will not warn you that a right of way is unrecorded unless it appears on the face of the file. Buyers who treat the notary as their adviser go through a purchase believing they are protected on questions the notary was never asked to consider.

The second thing to understand is that the notary sets the pace of the closing. Before a deed can be done the office has to see the register searched and clear, the parties identified, any mortgage coordinated with the lender, and the building's planning position declared and consistent. It is this last point that most often stops a Lake Como sale in its tracks, because a glazed loggia, an enlarged terrace or a converted outbuilding done thirty years ago now has to be reconciled with what the comune holds. An office that reads the file early raises that in week one; an office that reads it the night before raises it at the deed. Where a buyer does not speak Italian, the deed additionally requires an interpreter and, in the usual case, sworn translation, which is one more thing to arrange rather than to discover. And getting a date in a notary's diary in August is genuinely difficult.

Choosing is therefore worth doing deliberately. By convention the buyer chooses and pays, and it is entirely reasonable to decline the office suggested by the agent and ask why it was suggested. What separates the offices we would use is not legal skill, which can be assumed, but conduct: whether the office will deal with a foreign buyer patiently and in English, whether it examines the documents in advance rather than at the table, whether it explains what is being signed rather than reading it at speed, and whether it will tell a buyer plainly that a discrepancy needs resolving before the deed rather than waving it through. One further point, since it is the question everyone asks: the invoice combines the notary's own fee with the transfer taxes and registration charges they collect and pay to the state on your behalf, and the taxes are typically much the larger part. Comparing two offices on the total is comparing two tax bills, not two fees.