Managing condominium costs for a property being sold

Joint liability between seller and buyer for the previous two years

Article 63, second paragraph, of the implementing provisions of the Italian Civil Code states that whoever succeeds to a unit owner's rights is jointly liable with that owner for contributions relating to the current year and the previous one. In practice, a buyer can be asked by the property manager to pay amounts approved during the year of the sale or the year before it, even if those charges accrued while the seller still owned the unit.

This is joint liability toward the condominium, not a transfer of the debt itself: the property manager may pursue either party for payment, but internally the debt still belongs to the seller for the period of their ownership. Whoever pays on behalf of the other retains a right of recourse, which is enforced between the parties in civil proceedings, not against the condominium.

For this reason it is standard practice to include a clause in the notarial deed that expressly allocates condominium expenses between the parties, and often to require the seller to hand over a statement from the property manager on the unit's payment position, exactly as Article 63 requires.

The property manager's statement and what to check before closing

Article 63 also provides that whoever transfers rights over a unit remains jointly liable with the transferee for contributions accrued until an authentic copy of the transfer deed is delivered to the property manager. It is therefore essential that the seller promptly notify the property manager of the sale, attaching the deed, to clearly mark the end of their period of responsibility.

Before closing, it is advisable to request an updated statement from the property manager showing any outstanding arrears on the unit, the share of reserve funds or already approved extraordinary works not yet paid, and the status of the last approved financial statement's balance adjustments. This information lets the buyer negotiate a price adjustment or an escrow amount to cover known but not yet settled sums.

On AmministraPro, the property manager can generate an updated statement for a single unit within minutes, including the full history of payments and approved installments, a document that significantly simplifies this stage and reduces the risk of disputes after closing.

Year end balance adjustments: who pays when the statement arrives after the sale

A common scenario involves a balance adjustment approved by the assembly after the property has already been sold: the financial statement covers, in whole or in part, the period when the seller owned the unit, but the approval resolution, and therefore the enforceability of the claim against the unit owner, occurs when the unit already belongs to the buyer.

Case law generally applies an accrual criterion: the liability for expenses arises in relation to the management period the expense refers to, regardless of when the assembly formally approves the statement. This means that, absent a different agreement recorded in the deed, a balance adjustment relating to a period when the seller owned the unit remains the seller's responsibility internally, even though the property manager may still claim it from the buyer under joint liability.

To avoid disputes, many deeds include a specific clause on pending balance adjustments, sometimes with an amount withheld from the sale price as a guarantee, to be returned to the seller once the current year's financial statement is finally approved.

Updating the condominium registry: notices and deadlines

Article 1130, first paragraph, number 6, of the Civil Code requires the property manager to keep a condominium registry with each owner's personal details and the unit's land registry data. Any change of ownership must be notified to the property manager within sixty days, as the same article provides, together with the information needed to update the registry.

In practice, the notary or the seller sends a copy of the sale deed to the property manager, who then updates the registry with the buyer's details, recalculates the allocation of expenses from the effective date of the transfer, and sends the buyer the first assembly notices and subsequent meeting calls.

An always current condominium registry, such as the one managed within AmministraPro, reduces the risk of errors in cost allocation and lets the property manager respond quickly to requests for a payment status statement ahead of a sale, something increasingly requested by real estate agencies and notaries during due diligence.

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