Hi everyone,

A comment from Mrs. Doolittle in another thread raised this question.

I am hearing very conflicting reports on fees / taxes when buying property in Ticino, some say it is about 2-3% while some real estate agents say that I need to reserve 6% in liquid funds for transaction costs.

What I understand is that in Ticino it is customary for buyer to carry all purchase related expenses with exception of "Land sale profit tax" which is responsibility of seller.

The total numbers are actually rather difficult to find, all I could dig on costs carried by the buyer was:

• Notary fee: 0.70% from total transaction volume.
• Ownership change tax: 1.10% from total transaction volume.
• Land registry fee: 0.30% from total transaction volume.
• Debt certificate fee: ?.??% from mortgage amount.

The only unknown is debt certificate (Schuldbrief), even if we take 1% here it is still just ~3% of transaction volume in total, waaaay less then 6%. I asked people who claim 6% where this difference comes from and was told that I will need to visit Notary several times and a general "this is Ticino, it is different from rest of Switzerland".

Can someone who actually bought something in Ticino recently share his/her real life experience?

Thanks

3%

We've bought twice (apartment and rustico), so I know.

Apartment in 2014, rustico a couple years later.

Same lawyer/notary both times (my wife's lawyer), private sales each time.

Tom

some fees can bee spitted or will be taken care from the seller/buyer side depending on the contract, so there is room for discussion. This is also why not every transaction is the same.

True, and we own/live in Ticino, which is the OP's question.

Tom

I can say with certainty that the cost of buying a property in TI is significantly higher than in AG...actually shockingly so.

If I've understood the situation correctly, OP does not live in Ticino, although would be buying a property there (to live there later). Tom, on the other hand, lives there. Does that make any difference to the fees around buying?

Actually there is a difference in some Cantons. For example in Jura property ownership change tax is usually 2.1% but if this is your first purchase in Canton and you plan to use the home as primary residence it is 1.7%.

In Ticino it does not matter though.

Here is a nice document that outlines all possible scenarios with ownership change tax, unfortunately in German only.


This of course only affects ownership change tax.

Nope...significantly more. And I talk from experience...

My daughter and her husband lived in Teufenthal AG before emigrating to Melbourne a year ago, in a house his parents bought, so I know this to be quite true.

Their stand alone house also cost less than our apartment down here!

Tom

the notary fee is negotiable.

We've also bought property in Ticino, and we pay +-3% in total.

Regarding the "debt certificate fee", i think this is the "cartello ipotecario" which is a document drawn up by a lawyer which the bank needs to secure the mortgage loan at the Cadastre.

If the property already has a mortgage, you will not need to create another one, you just ask the seller to provide it. If there is no mortgage then you'll have to pay to have one.

As I recall, we took over the original one and added a second (total was 315k, original 200k).

Tom

not really. I paid 0.3% notary fee in 2017.