Renting out your property in Italy when you live abroad

Renting out property in Italy works in three ways: for a few days to people who are travelling, for a few months to people studying or working in the city, or for years on a traditional lease. Which one suits you depends less on the home than people think, and more on you: how much you want to use it, how much variation in income you can accept, and who deals with it on the spot while you live somewhere else.

There’s also a fourth option: keeping it closed. It’s the only one that brings nothing but costs.

Tax rules change: check them on the Italian Revenue Agency’s website and with your accountant before you sign anything.

Where you start: the most common situations

Almost nobody starts from the contract. You start from a situation, and each one points to a different path.

• The inherited home. It often comes with a lifetime’s furniture, sometimes to be shared with brothers, sisters or cousins. Before deciding you need the paperwork in order: the land registry extract and floor plan (visura and planimetria catastale) matching the home as it is today, and the energy performance certificate, the APE. If there are several heirs, you also need a written agreement on who decides, who signs and how income and costs are split.
• The home that has been empty for a while. The last tenant left and the next one hasn’t arrived. Meanwhile the fixed costs keep running: the property taxes, the building’s service charges, the standing charges on the utilities. And a closed home deteriorates, with damp, drains that aren’t used and systems that stand still.
• The home you left behind. You lived there for work or study before moving abroad, or it’s the family home in a place you rarely go back to. Here the question isn’t only how to let it, but who goes there when something needs doing.
• The holiday home. Owning a holiday home in Italy usually means a flat by the sea or in the mountains that you use a few weeks a year and that waits for you the rest of the time. It has seasons of its own, and they shape everything else.

The three options, in brief

Short-term rental. Stays of a few days, tourists and business trips. Income changes with the calendar, the work is daily, and the home stays yours in the weeks you block out. You need a furnished home in an area travellers look for, and a series of formalities before the first booking: they’re set out in Airbnb rules in Italy.

Mid-term rental. Contracts of a few months for people studying, on a work assignment or moving to the city. One tenant at a time, little turnover, contracts with precise rules: how it works is on the mid-term rental management page.

Long-term rental. A 4+4 lease at market rent (four years, renewed automatically for four more) or a 3+2 at an agreed rent, the canone concordato. Rent every month, little management, and the home committed for years. The details are on the long-term rental management page.

The point-by-point comparison — income, risk, work and freedom — is in short or long-term rental: how to decide. The question here is a different one: which option holds up in your situation.

Which option for which situation

• You want to keep using it a few weeks a year. Only a short-term rental allows that. With a mid-term let the home is committed for months, with a 4+4 for years.
• You need a predictable amount every month, perhaps to cover a mortgage repayment or the running costs. A long-term let is the natural path. An alternative is rent-to-rent, when the numbers for that home can support it: we become the tenant, you receive an agreed fixed rent, and the risk of empty months stays with us.
• The home is near a university, a hospital or an office district. In many areas, the mid-term let is the one that best balances income and peace of mind.
• The home is by the sea or in the mountains. Short lets in season, and out of season often a contract of a few months with someone working in the area.
• You’ve inherited it and don’t yet know whether to sell. Better a formula that doesn’t tie it up for years while you decide: short or mid-term, not a 4+4.
• You live abroad. All three options work, but only with someone on the spot. That’s the section below.

In Turin and Milan we often suggest alternating in the same home: short lets in the months with events and trade fairs, mid-term lets in the quiet ones. The choice isn’t forever.

Sell or rent out?

It’s the question heirs ask, and it has no answer in principle. What counts is the condition of the home and what it costs to make it lettable, whether you need the money now, how much time you want to give it, and your ties to the place.

A practical rule: if letting it needs major work and you don’t intend to do it, letting it as it is usually earns little and brings plenty of worries. If it’s habitable and in an area where homes let, trying a flexible formula for a year gives you real numbers to decide on.

We don’t sell homes. If the numbers say selling is the right path, we tell you, and we can introduce you to the estate agency we work with.

Owning a home in Italy while you live abroad

It changes a lot. A home that’s let needs someone on the spot far more often than it seems:

• Guests’ arrival. With a short let, the identity of the person arriving has to be checked, and their details sent to the police within 24 hours. A code sent by message, on its own, isn’t enough.
• Cleaning and linen, between one departure and the next arrival, often on the same day.
• Breakdowns. A leak or a boiler that stops won’t wait for your next trip.
• Handovers. With a mid or long-term let there’s the handover report, with photos of the state of the home, and at the end the return of the keys.
• Empty months. A closed home needs opening, airing and checking every so often.
• Paperwork. Much of it is done online with SPID or CIE, Italy’s digital identity systems, but the home’s documents have to be to hand. If you don’t have an Italian digital identity yet, sort it out early.

From abroad you can do all this in two ways: with a trusted person who lives nearby and has the time, or with a manager. With us, every month you get the statement: bookings, expenses and our commission, line by line. How and when payments are made is agreed with you and written into the contract, and in the app you can see how the home is doing without waiting for the end of the month. How we work with owners who live elsewhere is on the property management page.

Tax, in two lines

Once it’s let, the home produces income that has to be declared. For residential leases, and for short-term lets by private individuals, you can choose the cedolare secca, a flat-rate tax, instead of ordinary taxation. The rate depends on the type of contract and, for short lets, on how many flats you let. The up-to-date rules are in the Revenue Agency’s section on the cedolare secca (in Italian).

We don’t give tax advice. The choice should be made with your accountant, and if you live abroad it’s a conversation to have before the first contract, not after — ideally with someone who knows the rules of both countries. If you have a question about this page, ask us.

How we assess it together

We start with a property visit. We look at the home, the area and the real prices in the neighbourhood, and we tell you which of the three options makes sense, with the numbers for each. If we think the answer is a long-term let, we tell you so, even though for us it’s the least profitable option.

The estimate is free and doesn’t commit you. We manage homes in seven Italian regions — the Aosta Valley, Piedmont, Lombardy, Liguria, Lazio, Sardinia and Sicily — and the cities we work from are listed here.