Buyer and seller guide
Ways to buy a home, and who protects you in each.
Beyond a cash sale or a standard mortgage there are a dozen ways to buy or sell a home: rent first and buy later, pay in instalments, buy only the bare ownership, buy at a court auction, buy a share. They differ most in one thing: how much of the deal the law already writes for you.
Four levels of protection
We sorted the formulas found in research across Europe, the UK and US, Turkey, the Gulf and other markets by how much the law fixes in advance. No regulator publishes this ranking; it is our reading of the rules, dated October 2026.
1. Run by the state or by licensed lenders
Shared-ownership and shared-equity schemes, bank mortgages and Islamic home finance. A public body or a supervised lender sets the rules, and you deal with an institution that answers to a regulator. Example: in the UK, new Shared Ownership leases start from a 10% share (Birketts).
2. Covered by a dedicated law
Buying off-plan, statutory rent-to-buy, and splitting the land from the building. A specific law sets what must be in the contract and how your money is protected. In Germany, a developer payment plan that departs from the official schedule is void (bauprofessor). In Dubai, off-plan payments go into a monitored project account (Dubizzle).
3. Civil code and consumer law
Bare ownership, life annuity sales (viager), instalment sales with retention of title, seller credit, cooperatives and investment shares. The general civil code applies, sometimes with a consumer statute on top. Read the default and refund clauses closely, because the contract fills most of the gaps.
4. Contract only
Private lease-options, many rent-to-own offers abroad, and newer home-equity products. Here the contract is almost all the protection you have, and this is where most enforcement cases come from. In Australia, a consumer-law centre found many rent-to-buy deals unaffordable from the start (Consumer Action Law Centre).
What Italian law already provides
Italy is one of only two European countries in our research, with France, that gives rent-to-buy its own law.
Rent to buy
The contratto di godimento in funzione della successiva alienazione (art. 23, DL 133/2014) lets you live in the home and buy it later. The contract is transcribed in the property registers for up to ten years, which protects you against later sales and mortgages. Each payment is split into a use part and a price part, and the contract says how much of the price part comes back if you do not buy (LeggiOggi).
Sale with retention of title
In a vendita con riserva di proprietà you move in and pay in instalments, and ownership passes with the last one. It is a different contract from rent to buy, with different rules if a payment is missed. Ask the notary which one fits.
Bare ownership and life annuity
With nuda proprietà you buy a home at a discount while the seller keeps the right to live in it. With a rendita vitalizia part or all of the price is paid as a lifelong income to the seller. Both are civil-code contracts signed before a notary.
Court auctions
Italian court sales run online on the state Portale delle Vendite Pubbliche. Offers usually start from 75% of the base price, a deposit of at least 10% of the offer is required, and the deposit is lost if the winner does not complete (Tribunale di Livorno). Always read the court order: the exact terms are set case by case.
Court auctions in other countries
- Spain: the BOE Portal de Subastas, open for 20 days; tax-agency real-estate sales ask a 5% deposit (Legálitas).
- France: sales at the tribunal judiciaire, bidding only through a lawyer; anyone can outbid by 10% within 10 days (Eurojuris).
- Germany: in person at the local court, with a security of 10% of the assessed value (AG Bayreuth).
- Turkey: the UYAP e-Satış portal, with a 20% deposit and the balance due in seven days (sale notice).
Deposits look similar but each country applies the percentage to a different base: the valuation, the base price or the offer itself.
Five questions before you pay anything
The large failures in our research share one shape: the buyer paid before owning, and nothing held the money or registered the deal. In South Korea, 40,936 tenants were recognised as victims of deposit fraud by August 2026 (Kyunghyang). In the US, a court ordered 285 homes sold on lease-option and instalment contracts to be deeded to the buyers (Pennsylvania Attorney General).
- Where does my money sit? With the seller, or in a protected account until a milestone?
- Is the contract registered? A transcribed contract protects you if the owner sells or borrows against the home.
- What comes back if I stop? Ask for the refund formula in writing.
- Does anyone rank ahead of me? Check for existing mortgages and liens.
- Is the price fair? Compare it with similar homes before you agree to pay over time.
This is general information, not advice. Rules change and every deal depends on the property, the parties and the contract. Before signing, ask a notary, lawyer, tax adviser or financial adviser. Yortana is not a bank, notary, law firm or financial adviser. Today Yortana lists conventional sales and rent-to-own homes in Italy; the other formulas are described here for context.
Continue with how rent-to-own works on Yortana, the buyer guide or the rent-to-own calculator.