In Sardinia the notary is mandatory, but the notary is not your lawyer. The notary is a neutral public official who must ensure that the deed complies with Italian law and that the transfer is formally valid; the notary does not act as your advocate, does not negotiate clauses for you, and does not investigate the local planning and landscape risks in the same way a buyer‑side real estate lawyer does, especially in a region as regulated as Sardinia.
What the notary actually does in a Sardinian property purchase
Every property sale in Sardinia must be finalised in front of an Italian notary. Without a notarial deed, the sale is not valid and cannot be registered, so the notary’s presence at closing is not optional. The notary is a highly trained legal professional appointed by the Ministry of Justice who acts as a public official, not as a private advisor. Their role is to verify the legality of the transaction and to protect the public record, not to protect your individual economic interest.
In practice, the notary’s core tasks include checking that the seller is the registered owner, verifying that there are no registered mortgages, liens or seizures that would prevent the sale, ensuring that basic planning and cadastral conformity declarations are in place, collecting and paying the purchase taxes, and drafting and reading the final deed in Italian. The notary will often rely on declarations and documents supplied by the seller’s technician and by the parties themselves; they do not usually commission independent technical reports, visit the property or reconstruct in detail the planning history of every veranda, pool or extension.
From a structural point of view this works well for standard, domestic transactions in simple contexts, and most Italians buy and sell property relying only on the notary. But Sardinia is not a simple context. The combination of the PPR coastal rules, the 300 metre band, usi civici, stazzi on agricultural land, incomplete condoni and unlicensed pools means that many of the most serious risks you face as a foreign buyer will not automatically be solved by the notary’s general checks.
Where a real estate lawyer makes the difference in Sardinia: concrete examples
The first area where a Sardinia‑based real estate lawyer changes the outcome is in the reading of the Regional Landscape Plan (PPR) and the coastal constraints for your specific property. Sardinia’s PPR imposes a two kilometre coastal planning belt and, within it, zones where new construction is effectively banned and even small external works are tightly controlled, especially inside the 300 metre coastal band introduced by the Legge Galasso. Many of the classic “dream” properties foreign buyers look at in Sardinia fall exactly in this strip: sea view villas, hillside houses above beaches, rural homes a few hundred metres from the shore.
In these cases the most dangerous issues are often not obvious in the deed. A pool added without full landscape authorisation, a veranda enclosed beyond what was permitted, a terrace paved over in an area where new impermeable surfaces are restricted, or a rural house extended in volume beyond what the PPR allows in that zone are all typical problems that emerge only when someone systematically compares the approved plans and titles with the current reality and the PPR maps. The notary will normally check that the seller declares planning conformity and that a technical certificate exists; a buyer‑side lawyer, working with an independent surveyor where needed, asks the more uncomfortable question: is that certificate actually complete and consistent with the regional rules that apply here?
A second Sardinian specificity is the world of stazzi and old rural buildings. Many foreign buyers deliberately look for “renovated stazzo with land” to avoid the stress of managing works in a foreign language. Yet some of the worst legal problems we see come from precisely these “ready to move in” rural homes, where substantial works were carried out without full permits, or where an agricultural building has been transformed into a residential house without a proper change of use, often on agricultural land where residential use is, in reality, tightly restricted.
The house looks perfect, the photos are beautiful, the marketing stresses that someone else already took the renovation risk. In the documents, however, the cadastral plan and planning history may still show a smaller rural storehouse, a stable or a partially different layout. From a legal perspective, buying that property means inheriting every planning violation attached to it: potential fines, orders to restore or demolish part of the building, obstacles to new permits, problems with financing and resale, and in more serious cases even exposure to administrative or criminal proceedings for building abuses. A notary who is told that “everything is regular” and who sees a conformity declaration may not dig deeper unless something is obviously inconsistent. A lawyer instructed by you will deliberately look for these inconsistencies, precisely because they are where your risk lies.
A third concrete area is the interaction between PPR, usi civici and old rural land. Sardinia still has extensive areas subject to civic use rights, usi civici, under which local communities retain collective rights over land that, on paper, may appear to be privately owned. Land burdened by usi civici cannot be freely built on, sold or re‑zoned without following specific, technical procedures. In recent years several high profile cases have involved coastal or near‑coastal plots where sales proceeded without anyone adequately addressing the usi civici issue, leaving buyers with land that is legally frozen.
A buyer‑side lawyer familiar with Sardinian law will check not only title and zoning but also whether usi civici or other public law constraints such as hydrogeological risk zones or Natura 2000 designations affect the property and what that means for your plans. This is not a standard check in all Italian transactions, and it is particularly important in Sardinia because of the density of these constraints.
Why relying only on the notary is not enough for a foreign buyer in Sardinia
For an Italian buyer who knows the language, the system and the local context, relying solely on the notary can be an acceptable compromise: they may accept a higher level of risk because they know how to manage disputes locally and they are buying in a legal culture they understand from childhood. For a foreign buyer purchasing in Sardinia, often remotely and in a language they do not master, the asymmetry of information is much greater and the margin for error is smaller.
The notary’s neutrality, which is a strength of the Italian system, means that you do not have a professional whose mandate is to say “this is a bad idea for you” or “this clause exposes you to a risk you have not understood” or “this property is in a PPR zone where you will never get the pool you are already planning for”. The notary is there to ensure that the transaction is formally valid, not to advise you whether it is wise.
A Sardinia‑based real estate lawyer, engaged by you, does exactly that. The lawyer’s job is to act only in your interest, to reconstruct the property’s legal and planning history, to identify discrepancies between what is on the ground and what is in the files, to explain the impact of the PPR, coastal band, stazzi status, old rural classifications, usi civici, flood or landslide risk and any unlicensed works, and to translate all of this into clear recommendations: proceed as planned, proceed only if certain conditions are met, renegotiate, or walk away.
The cost of this independent due diligence is small compared to the price of the property and to the potential cost of discovering problems after you have signed a binding compromesso and paid a substantial deposit. In Sardinia, where landscape rules, old rural buildings and partial regularisations are the norm rather than the exception, treating the notary as sufficient legal protection is often the most expensive saving you can make.
If you are asking yourself whether you really need a real estate lawyer to buy in Sardinia because “there is already a notary”, the very fact that you are asking is usually a sign that you would benefit from independent advice. Write to govonilaw@gmail.com describing the property and your situation, or send the draft compromesso or deed you have received. You will receive a specific, written assessment of what the notary will and will not do for you in that transaction, where the real risks lie in your case, and how legal due diligence can protect you before you sign or pay anything.