You buy a house in Italy, sign the deed, receive the keys and assume that whatever happened to the property before the sale is now part of its history.
Then the municipality discovers an extension, staircase or alteration that was never properly authorised.
You did not build it. You may not even have known it was illegal.
So surely it remains the previous owner’s problem?
Not necessarily.
A recent ruling from Italy’s Consiglio di Stato has clarified an important distinction for anyone buying property in the country: an innocent buyer may be able to avoid a financial penalty for unauthorized work carried out by someone else, but that does not automatically protect them from an order to demolish or restore the property.
In other words, when it comes to Italian building violations, the answer to “who is responsible?” depends on exactly what kind of consequence we are talking about.
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The Case Started With a House Bought in 2019
The ruling, Consiglio di Stato judgment No. 6401/2026, concerned a house in Formello, near Rome, which its current owner had purchased in 2019.
During a municipal inspection, officials identified several discrepancies between the property and the required planning authorisations.
These included changes to the internal layout, a concrete staircase connecting the ground floor to the basement and an extension of around 24 square metres.
According to the municipality, different parts of the work should have required instruments including a CILA, a SCIA and, for the extension, a building permit as well as additional landscape, seismic and environmental approvals.
The local authority ordered the extension to be demolished and imposed a €5,000 financial penalty relating to the staircase.
It also warned of much more serious consequences if the demolition order was ignored.
The problem was that the current owner argued that the works were already there when she bought the property.
Buying the Property Does Not Mean You Committed the Violation
This is where the court drew an important distinction.
A financial sanction imposed because unauthorized building work was carried out has a personal and punitive character.
That means authorities cannot simply assume that whoever owns the property today was also responsible for carrying out the illegal work.
If a buyer can demonstrate that the alteration existed before the purchase and that they had no involvement in creating it, the original financial penalty should not automatically transfer to them simply because ownership changed.
In the Formello case, the Consiglio di Stato accepted that there was enough evidence to show that the disputed staircase pre-dated the purchase.
As a result, the court removed the €5,000 penalty imposed on the new owner.
That sounds reassuring for property buyers.
But it is only half of the story.
The Demolition Order Follows the Property
An order to demolish unauthorized construction works very differently.
Its purpose is not primarily to punish the person who originally carried out the work. It is to restore the property to a lawful condition.
For that reason, the obligation is connected to the building itself.
The current owner is the person who has legal and physical control of the property and is therefore the person who may be required to comply with the order — even if somebody else created the violation years earlier.
In the case examined by the court, the owner was therefore protected from the €5,000 penalty connected to the previous unauthorized work, but the demolition order concerning the 24-square-metre extension remained valid.
It is a distinction that anyone buying a property in Italy should understand.
You may be innocent of creating the problem and still inherit the obligation to fix it.
How Can a Buyer Prove the Work Was Already There?
The ruling is also useful because it explains the kind of evidence that can help an owner demonstrate that an unauthorized alteration predates their purchase.
The buyer does not necessarily need one document explicitly stating when the work was carried out.
Courts can consider several consistent pieces of evidence together.
In this case, important elements included the old estate-agent advertisement describing the property before the purchase, the preliminary contract and final deed, statements made by the seller about the property’s conformity and the physical layout of the building itself.
The owner had also attempted to reach a settlement with the seller after discovering the problem.
Together, these elements supported the argument that she had acquired a property where the disputed works already existed.
For prospective buyers, that leads to a much broader lesson: the photos, plans, advertisements and documents you receive before buying a property can become extremely important evidence later.
Ignoring the Demolition Order Can Make Things Much Worse
Discovering that you inherited an unauthorized extension is already bad enough. Ignoring the problem can be considerably worse.
Under Italy’s building regulations, once a demolition order has been issued, the owner generally has 90 days to comply.
If that deadline expires without action, the consequences can go far beyond the original building violation.
The unauthorized property — together with the relevant land — can be acquired free of charge by the municipality, while an additional administrative fine of between €2,000 and €20,000 may also apply.
This is important because, at that point, the issue is no longer simply about something the previous owner did.
The current owner’s failure to comply with the demolition order becomes a separate violation.
That is why buying the property in good faith does not mean a new owner can simply ignore an order addressed to them.
Can You Make the Seller Pay?
If the unauthorized work existed before the purchase, the buyer may have another route: pursuing the seller through the civil courts.
Exactly what can be claimed will depend on the circumstances of the transaction, the wording of the sale agreement, what the seller declared and whether the buyer was informed about the problem before signing.
In the case examined by the Consiglio di Stato, the sale documents included declarations concerning the property’s conformity, while the new owner later attempted to reach a settlement with the seller.
A buyer who unexpectedly discovers serious unauthorized work should therefore preserve as much evidence as possible: the preliminary agreement, final deed, technical reports, emails, property advertisements, photographs and any declarations made during the sale.
That evidence may be relevant both for proving that the buyer did not carry out the illegal works and for any subsequent claim against the seller.
Before assuming that demolition is inevitable, however, the property should also be examined by a qualified technician and, where necessary, a lawyer. Depending on the type of violation and the applicable planning rules, some discrepancies may potentially be regularised, while others cannot.
The Check Buyers Should Make Before Signing
The safest moment to discover a building problem is not after receiving the keys. It is before the purchase is completed.
Anyone buying property in Italy should consider having an independent architect, engineer or surveyor reconstruct the property’s planning history and compare what physically exists with the documents held by the municipality.
A cadastral floor plan alone should not be treated as proof that every part of a property is legally authorised.
Under Italian building law, the property’s “stato legittimo” — its lawful planning status — is reconstructed primarily through the building permits and other legally relevant documents that authorised its construction and subsequent alterations.
That means a room can appear on a cadastral plan without automatically resolving the separate question of whether it was properly authorised from an urban-planning perspective.
Before buying, particular attention should therefore be paid to extensions, closed balconies, converted attics, basements, terraces, internal staircases, changes of use and rooms that appear to have been added or substantially modified.
Older properties deserve especially careful checks because decades of renovations may have produced a complicated chain of permits and alterations.
For foreign buyers, this is one of the reasons it can be risky to assume that the notarial deed alone amounts to a complete technical inspection of the building.
If you are considering entering the Italian property market, you can also read our guide to why wealthy international buyers are increasingly moving to Italy, while the official Article 31 of Italy’s Building Code sets out the rules governing demolition orders and their consequences.
The lesson from the 2026 ruling is uncomfortable but simple: when you buy a home, you may also inherit its planning problems.
You might be able to prove that you never created the violation. You might avoid a penalty imposed for somebody else’s actions. You may even have a claim against the seller.
But if part of the property was built illegally and cannot be regularised, being an innocent buyer does not necessarily stop Italy from asking you to remove it.
