Land Registry, definition
“Originally, any inventory of property, including movable property, and of its owners, for the purpose of allocating the tax burden; hence, the operations aimed at determining ownership, particularly for the purposes of land tax, and, sometimes, the tax itself. Today, the general inventory of real estate, containing the particulars relating to the size and census income of the property itself and the persons or entities who own and possess it: rustic or land registry, which concerns land; urban or building registry, which concerns buildings; descriptive registry, if it limits itself to a general description of the property, forgoing graphic representations; geometric registry, if the surveys shown on the plan are used to determine the extent of the property; in a general sense, to make, form, renew the registry; to place, place, mark in the registry or in the land registry. Land registry office, the one where they are kept. and keep the land registry books up to date; often referred to for short as the cadastral register.
Cadastral merger or consolidation: what is it?
Cadastral merger, in a nutshell, is the merging of multiple cadastral registers.
In practical terms, it involves the union of at least two real estate units, with the same ownership and intended use, combined to form a single unit. The units involved must be adjacent, therefore overlapping, or contiguous, or communicating, or bordering. It is necessary to demonstrate that the property is actually a single unit, carrying out any necessary work, such as changing openings and passages, electrical systems, and partitions.
If these requirements are met, it is possible to implement the merger, creating a single home and thus benefiting from the benefits reserved for primary residences (for example, the cancellation of the IMU property tax).
Who handles the cadastral merger procedures?
In practice, cadastral merger procedures can be handled by qualified technical professionals, duly registered with professional associations, such as architects, engineers, surveyors, building experts, agronomists, forestry experts, and agricultural experts, limited to rural and agricultural buildings.
How and which procedures should be submitted?
Since 1996, cadastral merger procedures have been completed using the DOCFA software, an acronym for DOcumenti Catasto Fabbricati (Building Catalogue Documents), which has obviously undergone updates over the years. It was created at the request of the Italian Government, with the aim of streamlining chaotic bureaucracy, and was immediately made available free of charge to professional associations of technical professions, which can download the software free of charge from the official Revenue Agency website. This apparent ease of operation, however, should not obscure the need and importance of having professionals with the necessary skills to properly use the program; Completing and submitting the documentation is not trivial and requires specific skills, given the sensitive data that must then be sent to the local offices.
The advent of software has not changed the type and number of forms to be submitted; simply being electronic simplifies and speeds up the process. These include forms D, 1N, and 2N, as well as the planimetric drawings and the subaltern list (all documents are the responsibility of qualified technicians).
Costs and Fees
The fixed and predictable costs for the land registry are €50.00 for each unit, whether it is a variation, an addition, a division, or a new construction, and €70.00 for the Transfer Fees (the cadastral transfer is the document required to update cadastral registrations).
There are no predefined fees or price lists for the professional services you choose; this will be the variable factor that will influence the overall cost of the service.
In-depth analysis by Andrea Zuccher, an architect who works in Verona and throughout Italy.