The Purchase Completion or Rogito

On Friday 10th of November, we travelled out to Urbania in the Marche region of Italy to complete on our purchase of Castello dei Pecorari and sign the final contract or Rogito
Francesca had arrived earlier that Friday to complete the paperwork with the bank and collect the banker’s drafts. Inevitably there were some final checks to make to ensure that the actual completion the following day went without a hitch. Unusually the Notaio had agreed to complete the act on a Saturday morning, as we both needed to be at the signing of the documents, and work had precluded me from travelling out earlier.

Buying a property in Italy is a very formal affair, with considerable documentation and opportunity for things to go wrong at the last minute. The Rogito is the final stage of the process and transfers ownership of the property from the seller to the buyer (usually 1-3 months after the Compromesso, but in our case we had asked for considerably longer). The document is drawn up by the Notary (Notaio), who represents both parties. The buyer, seller and estate agent are all required to be present for the signing of the contract at the Notary’s office. However the precision and organisation of our agent, Cesare Belpasso ensured that all the correct details about names ownership, percentages and amounts to be paid to whom had all been checked and double checked an given to the Notaio in advance.

The completion itself took place at the Notaio’s office in Urbania. We had split the deal into two separate meetings –one to deal with the extra land that we had purchased, the other to do with acquisition of the castle and the bulk of the land.

The Notaio read out the full document from cover to cover. We passed over the money to the sellers, signed the documents, shook hands and that was that. We retired to the bar next door to toast our purchase and the beginning of our restoration project.

We were now the owners of 25 acres of hillside, truffle oak and a ruined medieval castle deep in the heartland of Le Marche.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 14th, 2006 at 15:08. It is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.