Online lease signing for mid-term rentals in Italy, with tenant documents and rent in the same flow

How lease signing works with Maurice

1. 01

   The booking arrives

   From Uniplaces, HousingAnywhere or Spotahome, from your PMS, or through Zapier, Make and n8n. See integrations.

2. 02

   You prepare the lease

   Start from your own contract, drafted on the template of the Ministerial Decree of 16 January 2017 and your municipality’s local agreement, usually with an adviser or a landlords’ association. The rules are in our guide to the Italian transitional lease.

3. 03

   Maurice sends it to the tenant

   When you ask, together with the document request. If the tenant has questions about the steps, they ask Maurice in the chat, in their own language.

4. 04

   Documents approved, lease signed

   Maurice collects and checks ID documents; you review and approve the rest. Every party signs, with the signature type you’ve chosen.

5. 05

   Deposit, registration and rent

   The deposit is paid by card; you or your adviser register the lease within 30 days; from then on Maurice collects rent every month, with reminders to the tenant.

Which electronic signature is valid for an Italian lease

Italy’s residential tenancy law requires written form for a lease to be valid (L. 431/1998, art. 1(4)). That covers the transitional lease (contratto transitorio), the student lease, the 3+2 and the 4+4. A lease signed online meets that requirement only with the right type of signature, as set out in the Italian Digital Administration Code (CAD, Legislative Decree 82/2005, arts. 20 and 21) and the EU eIDAS Regulation (No 910/2014).

The difference has a concrete consequence. Under art. 21(2-bis) of the CAD, the private agreements listed in art. 1350 of the Civil Code, nos. 1 to 12, which include leases over nine years, are void unless signed with a qualified or digital signature. Other documents the law requires in writing (no. 13), such as a residential lease, need an advanced, qualified or digital signature, or the art. 20 procedure such as SPID.

Between an advanced and a qualified signature, what changes is mostly the burden of proof. If someone disowns a qualified signature, they have to prove they didn’t make it; with an advanced signature, whoever relies on the lease has to prove the signing solution meets the technical rules of the Decree of 22 February 2013. That’s why AgID, Italy’s digital agency, recommends a qualified signature where the risk of a dispute is significant. Good news for cross-border lets: a qualified signature issued in another EU country is recognised as a qualified signature in Italy too.

After signing: registration within 30 days and taxes

The lease must be registered with the Agenzia delle Entrate (the Italian Revenue Agency) within 30 days of signing, or of the start date if earlier; the only exception is a lease of no more than 30 days in total in a year between the same parties. You register online with RLI web, at an Agenzia office or through an authorised intermediary; online filing is mandatory for estate agents and for owners of at least 10 properties. An unregistered lease is void in Italy (L. 311/2004, art. 1(346)).

• Copy of the lease: with RLI web you attach a single TIF/TIFF or PDF/A file with the lease signed by the parties. It’s optional for simple residential leases: up to three landlords and three tenants, one property with up to three appurtenances, no stamp-duty attachments and no special clauses.
• Party details: the RLI form asks for the personal details and Italian tax code (codice fiscale) of every landlord and tenant. If your tenant comes from abroad, request the codice fiscale as an additional document.
• Taxes: without the flat-rate cedolare secca, you pay registration tax (2% of the annual rent, minimum €67 for the first year) and stamp duty (€16 for every 4 written sides, and in any case every 100 lines, per copy). With the cedolare secca neither is due.
• E-signatures and stamp duty: signing online doesn’t remove registration tax or stamp duty. How to count copies and sheets for a lease that only exists digitally is a detail to check with your adviser.

Registration stays with you or your adviser: Maurice doesn’t register the lease. If a transitional lease isn’t signed with the assistance of the landlord and tenant associations, you also need an attestation from an organisation that signed the local agreement. For an overview of the lease types, read our guide to rental contracts in Italy.

Which leases it’s for

Online signing with Maurice is built for the ordinary transitional lease (up to 18 months, with a documented temporary need), the university student lease (6 to 36 months) and mixed portfolios of short and mid-term lets in one account; the written-form rule is the same for 3+2 and 4+4 leases. The rest of the workflow is on the pages for mid-term rentals and payments and rent, and you can compare tools in the best mid-term rental software in Italy.