A legitimate status report is signed in one minute. What’s behind it is not a transcription of documents: it is a judgement. The technician declares that what exists corresponds to what has been authorized, and he does so on the basis of papers that someone else has given him, which are almost always incomplete. The problems arise there, not in the drafting.
After the Save Home decree – decree-law of 29 May 2024, n. 69, converted into law 24 July 2024, n. 105 – the definition has changed in a direction favorable to the technician. However, there are still three questions to ask when faced with a file: which document is authentic, how far it reaches, and what is written when it is not there.
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The last title is valid, but under one condition
Article 9-bis, paragraph 1-bis, of Presidential Decree 380/2001 establishes that the legitimate status is that established by the title which provided for the construction or from the one, “released or consented”, which regulated the last intervention on the entire property or on the entire property unit. Before Salva Casa the conjunction was “and”: both were needed, and therefore the entire chain. Today the second is enough.
However, this is enough “provided that the competent administration, when issuing the same, has verified the legitimacy of the previous qualifications”. This condition is the point at which the simplification stops: if from the documents of the last title it does not appear that the Municipality has carried out that verification, the shortcut is not there and the chain must be rebuilt anyway. The guidelines of the Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport of 30 January 2025 allow it to be assumed when the details of the previous titles appear in the documents: it is the most useful interpretation in circulation, but that document declares that it has no binding value.
Salva Casa also added a paragraph 1-ter which in the study is worth more than many discussions: the discrepancies in the common parts are not relevant for the legitimate state of the individual unit, and the discrepancies of the individual units are not relevant for that of the building. The condominium with the different staircase no longer blocks the deed of the apartment.
Three cards that don’t prove what they seem
They are the three that are most often found in the files, and none of the three hold up:
- The partial titles: a license for the expansion, a SCIA for the bathroom, a CILA for the partitions do not demonstrate the legitimacy of the building: they all refer “to specific and specific interventions, none of which affected the entire building or the entire real estate unit” (Cons. Stato, sec. II, 14 May 2025, n. 4127).
- The works drawn in the tables: the fact that a work appears in the graphic attached to a practice does not legitimize it: “an act of implicit consent to abusive works cannot exist nor can it be legally configured” (Cons. Stato, section VII, 18 February 2025, n. 1382).
- Usability: this is the most widespread misconception. In the case decided by Council. State, sec. III, 24 March 2026, n. 2443, “no importance can be attributed to the ascertained usability of the premises”, because it is a provision “based on assumptions that ignore the regularity and urban planning legitimacy of the property”.
Not even the time that has passed proves anything: the administration does not lose its repressive power because it has remained inert for thirty years. And the cadastral surveys have fiscal purposes and only subsidiary value – the original cadastre is something else, and the law mentions it.
Tolerances: the thresholds and the two conditions that almost no one mentions
Article 34-bis sets the ordinary constructive tolerance at 2 percent of the measures provided for in the title. As we know, the Save Casa has added wider thresholds, which increase as the useful surface area decreases: 3 percent between 300 and 500 square metres, 4 between 100 and 300, 5 under 100, 6 under 60.
Graduated thresholds are everywhere. The two conditions that accompany them much less, and are the ones that make the difference in asseveration. The first: they are only valid “for interventions carried out by 24 May 2024”, after that date 2 percent remains and that’s it. The second: on the minimum measures regarding distances and hygiene-sanitary requirements, the permitted deviation is always and only 2 percent, whatever the surface. Applying 6 percent to an interior height is an error that you don’t see until someone goes to measure.
When the file is not found
For properties built when the title was not mandatory, the legitimate status is obtained from the first cadastral information or from “other probative documents”: photographic shots, cartographic extracts, archive documents, deeds of proven provenance. The same approach applies when there is a principle of proof of title for which a copy or details are not available – the destroyed or lost file, which in many municipal archives is the rule rather than the exception.
A practical point: if the Municipality declares the practice untraceable, it cannot simply say so. He must carry out the research and issue a formal and reasoned certificate. That document must be requested and attached, it is proof that the investigation took place.
Before the deed
On a civil level, the act is valid if it contains urban planning mentions: the United Sections of the Supreme Court, with sentence no. 8230 of 2019, have characterized that nullity as textual and not substantial. However, the principle requires that the declaration be real and referable to the property: An untruthful statement does not satisfy that requirement. The difference between a valid document and a null one can therefore depend on a piece of data that the technician puts in the document.
Legitimate status is not a stamp. It is a documentary judgment, signed by the person issuing it, which is worth as much as the file on which it is based. When the file is incomplete, the correct response is not to soften the formula: it is to write what was searched for, what was found and where the search stopped.
