Independent legal protection for buyers across all of Italy.
We work on the buyer’s side. Before any offer is signed, any deposit is paid, or any commitment is made, we verify the property, the title, the contracts, and the legal risks behind the transaction. That way, you know exactly what you are buying, what could go wrong, and whether the deal is worth pursuing at all.
Buying without legal verification is not an investment. It is a gamble.
Buying property in Italy can look deceptively simple from the outside. In reality, foreign buyers often face title issues, planning irregularities, weak preliminary contracts, inheritance complications, hidden encumbrances, and negotiations shaped by parties whose goal is to close the deal, not to protect the buyer. In many transactions, no one involved is truly acting only in your interest.
At Govoni Law, we provide independent legal assistance for international clients purchasing property in Sardinia and throughout Italy. Our work began in Sardinia, where we built one of the most focused buyer-protection practices for foreign clients in the Mediterranean. Over time, the demand expanded beyond the island, but the legal problems remained remarkably similar: irregular ownership chains, informal building works, weak contract drafting, and one-sided negotiations in which the buyer is often expected to rely on trust rather than verification.
What changed was the geography. What did not change was the method.
We identify the risk before the commitment, explain it clearly, and help buyers move forward with a stronger legal position before money changes hands.
“Nobody in the room is officially on your side.
That is where we come in.”
What we do and why it matters
This page is the main overview of our legal work for property buyers. It brings together the core areas in which we assist foreign clients: legal due diligence, buy-side legal assistance, preliminary contract review and drafting, remote purchase support, power of attorney arrangements, and property matters involving inheritance or succession.
These are not isolated services assembled for convenience. They are different parts of the same buyer-protection method. A property purchase is rarely made risky by one problem alone. More often, risk builds quietly through a combination of missing checks, weak paperwork, unclear assumptions, and pressure to move quickly before the full legal picture is understood.
That is why our role is not simply to “review documents”. Our role is to understand where legal exposure sits in the transaction, reduce it where possible, and tell the buyer — in writing and without ambiguity — whether the purchase is solid, flawed, or better abandoned.
Not just Sardinia. Italy.
Although our firm is based in Sardinia and much of our early work developed around the island, we assist buyers across Italy. Today our clients may be looking at a coastal property in Sardinia, a farmhouse in Tuscany, an apartment in Milan, a trullo in Puglia, or inherited real estate elsewhere in the country. The location changes, but the question remains the same: is the property legally safe, fairly presented, and properly structured for the buyer?
Our work follows the buyer, not the region. Sardinia remains an important part of what we do, but it is no longer the outer limit of our field of work. The site itself is evolving in the same direction: from a regional legal reference point into a broader Italian platform for informed property buying, legal protection, and buyer-oriented tools.
Services Overview
1. Legal Due Diligence
Legal due diligence is the foundation of any serious property purchase in Italy. Before you sign a purchase offer, pay a deposit, or move toward the compromesso, we verify the legal position of the property and identify the risks that matter. This may include title issues, ownership history, encumbrances, co-ownership problems, planning and building irregularities, easements, restrictions, inheritance-related defects, and other legal flaws capable of affecting value, usability, transferability, or future resale.
In practical terms, due diligence is what separates an informed acquisition from an expensive assumption. A buyer may be shown a beautiful property, reassured by an agent, and told that everything is “regular”, while essential legal and technical issues remain unchecked in the background. Our task is to replace reassurance with verification.
For a better understanding of what legal due diligence is, read this page.
2. Buy-Side Legal Assistance
Some clients need more than a one-off legal review. They need a lawyer on the buyer’s side throughout the acquisition. In those cases, we assist from the early stage of the transaction onward, helping with negotiations, document review, legal strategy, coordination with agents and notaries, and the overall structure of the purchase.
This is particularly important when the transaction is valuable, time-sensitive, cross-border, or already showing signs of imbalance. In such cases, legal work is not just about spotting defects. It is also about controlling the process, slowing it down where necessary, asking the right questions at the right time, and ensuring that the buyer’s position is not weakened by haste, vagueness, or poorly drafted commitments.
3. Preliminary Contract and Clause Draft and Review
The preliminary phase is often where buyers take the greatest legal risk. Purchase offers, reservation forms, draft agreements, and compromesso clauses are frequently presented as routine paperwork, when in reality they are often the documents that create the first serious financial and legal exposure.
We review and draft preliminary agreements and protective clauses so that deposits, deadlines, conditions precedent, seller obligations, default scenarios, and exit mechanisms are handled with proper legal care rather than left to assumptions or generic templates. What matters at this stage is not simply whether a clause exists, but whether it is written in a way that truly protects the buyer when something goes wrong.
4. Remote Purchase Assistance and PoA (Power of Attorney)
Many of our clients are abroad when they begin the process and remain abroad throughout the transaction. We assist foreign buyers who want to manage part or all of the purchase remotely, helping them understand documents, structure decisions properly, organise the sequence of steps, and reduce the risk of committing to a transaction before the legal picture is truly clear.
Where appropriate, this may also involve power of attorney arrangements, written coordination with the notary, and broader support aimed at allowing the buyer to proceed without being physically present in Italy at every stage. Remote purchasing can work well, but only when distance is compensated by structure, clear documentation, and legal discipline.
For a practical introduction, see this guide: Buying property in Sardinia from abroad: how a remote purchase works.
5. Inheritance and Property Succession
We also assist with Italian property matters connected to inheritance, succession, co-heir issues, and inherited real estate. This is particularly relevant where foreign heirs are dealing with Italian formalities, title continuity, succession planning, unresolved ownership positions, or the sale and regularisation of inherited property.
These matters are often underestimated by buyers and heirs alike, especially where a property has passed through several generations, contains informal arrangements, or has never been fully regularised after a death. In those situations, the legal history of the asset matters as much as its present condition. Also, for further information, read more here.
Why our one-to-one work stays selective
We do not try to handle an unlimited volume of files. Many foreign buyers contact us every month, but our one-to-one legal work remains intentionally selective because we prefer to protect quality, attention, and judgment rather than dilute the service.
Careful legal work is not compatible with volume for the sake of volume. When we take on a matter, it must be one to which we can devote real legal focus: proper document review, written analysis, strategic thinking, and clear follow-up. That is how we protect our clients, and it is also how we protect the standards of our work.
This means that, in some cases, after an initial assessment, we may conclude that we are not the right fit for a full one-to-one engagement, or that our involvement would not be proportionate to the value, stage, or complexity of the transaction. Saying no is sometimes the most honest form of advice we can give.
DIY products for buyers who need a different starting point
Not every buyer needs, wants, or can access bespoke one-to-one legal assistance. Some need a safer starting point, a clearer framework, or practical legal guidance before deciding whether to instruct a lawyer directly. Others want to move with more independence, spend less, or simply understand the legal terrain before entering into a full professional relationship.
For those buyers, we are preparing a focused line of self-guided legal products designed for property purchases anywhere in Italy. These materials are built on the same legal questions, structures, and warning signals that shape our daily work, but they are organised in a way that allows buyers to apply them independently and at a much lower cost.
These tools are not a substitute for tailored legal advice in complex or high-risk matters. They are, however, far better than guesswork. They are meant to help buyers slow the process down, ask better questions, recognise red flags earlier, understand what documents actually matter, and avoid some of the most common and expensive mistakes made by foreign buyers entering the Italian market.
The first products will include:
- Legal Due Diligence Property in Italy Guide
- SafetyPack – Purchase Home in Italy
- Email Clauses Toolkit
These materials are intended for buyers in Italy as a whole, even though our firm is based in Sardinia and much of our content began with the Sardinian market and with the specific needs of foreign buyers active there.
Choosing the right path
If you need tailored legal support, you can contact us to describe the property, the stage of the transaction, and the kind of assistance you are looking for. We will tell you, in writing, whether one-to-one work is appropriate, what it would involve, and how we can assist.
If your matter is not suitable for a one-to-one engagement, or if you prefer a more independent route at the beginning, our digital legal products will soon offer a practical alternative: a way to approach the Italian property market better informed, better structured, and significantly less exposed than buyers who simply rely on optimism, agency pressure, or incomplete information.