Finding somewhere to live in Turin

The rent comes from a table

Turin's concordato rents rest on an accordo territoriale signed on 6 December 2022, with values updated to 15 April 2024 and stated as in force from 1 May 2024. It divides the city into four zones — Centro, Semiperiferia, Periferia and Collina — and scores each flat against a published list of features. On a 3+2 contract for a flat scoring the full six feature points, Centro runs €3.70 to €6.50 per square metre per month and Periferia €3.70 to €5.50; at 5.5 or 4.5 points Centro falls to €3.10 to €5.70, and at four points or fewer it is €2.50 to €4.60 while Periferia bottoms out at €2.50 to €4.00. The landlord only gets the 10 per cent flat tax that makes a concordato worth signing if the contract is certified as congruent, so both sides have a reason to stay inside the table.

• Features worth a point each: covered parking or an exclusive courtyard space, a cellar, an attic, air conditioning, a lift, an exclusive garden or courtyard, an armoured door, a second bathroom, a fitted kitchen with fridge and washing machine, a videointercom, and a metro stop within 400 metres. A gas connection is worth half a point.
• Heating is scored too: a centralised boiler with no thermostatic valves takes half a point, while autonomous heating, or a centralised system with valves and heat-cost allocators on every radiator, takes a full point.
• Energy-efficiency works carried out or under way in the last five years also count towards the score.
• Where the contract was not drawn up with association assistance, the attestazione di congruità signed by a landlord and a tenant association is what certifies the rent — Allegati 9 and 10 of the accordo.
• The table minimums can be cut by up to 10 per cent for a particularly run-down building, for a let to a relative or in-law within the third degree, or for a contract drawn up by the city's Lo.C.A.Re. agency — but only if the reason is written into the contract and it is signed off by a representative of both a signatory tenants' association and a signatory landlords' association.

Four lengths, and the transitorio

The concordato here is not only the 3+2. Turin publishes 3+2, 4+2, 5+2 and 6+2, and the ceiling rises with the term: the top-band Centro maximum is €6.50, €6.60, €6.70 and €6.90 per square metre respectively. A transitorio, capped at eighteen months and requiring a documented temporary reason such as work, health or family, is priced off the 3+2 row of the same table, so a short let is not a licence to charge more per metre. University student lets have their own rent table and their own contract models, which is a separate regime from the ordinary transitorio.

• 4+4: open-market rent, four years renewing for four, outside the table entirely.
• 3+2 concordato: three years renewing for two unless terminated six months before expiry.
• If you want a long guaranteed term, ask for the 5+2 or 6+2 rather than accepting a 4+4.

Registration, deposit and the 48-hour declaration

Any lease longer than thirty days must be registered with the Agenzia delle Entrate within thirty days of signature, the duty sits on both parties, and the cost is split in half unless you agree otherwise. So a landlord who will not register is not an obstacle you have to accept: you can register it yourself, and an unregistered lease is void along with every protection in it. The deposit is customarily one or two months' rent and cannot exceed three by law; it cannot be applied to unpaid rent without your express consent, and it comes back after a move-out inspection. Anyone providing accommodation to a foreign national must also file a dichiarazione di ospitalità within 48 hours, relatives included, and a landlord who has never heard of it is a warning sign.

What the rent does not cover

The accordo reproduces the national split of running costs, and it puts more on the tenant than people expect: fuel and heating, water and electricity consumption, ordinary maintenance of the heating plant with its annual clean and seasonal shutdown, meter readings, lift power and lift inspections, ordinary maintenance of gutters, roofs, drains, floors, fixtures, locks, glass and painting, and 90 per cent of the porter's pay and allowances. The landlord carries installation, replacement, legal upgrading of plant, extraordinary maintenance and the remaining 10 per cent of the porter. The euro amounts vary block by block and nobody publishes a Turin average, so ask for last year's condominio statement rather than an estimate.

• Ask whether heating is billed by consumption or by millesimi; the accordo assumes metering, so a block without it is the penalised exception.
• The classe energetica on the APE certificate is the best single predictor of a Po valley winter bill.
• Agency fees are quoted either as months of rent or as a percentage of the annual rent, with VAT sometimes on top. Get the figure and the VAT treatment in writing before you view.

In order

1. 1Get the codice fiscale first; nothing is signed or registered without it.
2. 2Ask which accordo zone the flat is in and what its floor area is in square metres.
3. 3Score the flat against the feature list and check the asking rent against the table.
4. 4Ask for last year's condominio statement and whether heating is billed by consumption.
5. 5If it is a concordato, have a signatory tenants' association draw up or certify the contract.
6. 6Pay the deposit by traceable bank transfer and keep the receipt.
7. 7Confirm registration with the Agenzia delle Entrate within 30 days, and register it yourself if the landlord will not.
8. 8Ask the landlord to file the dichiarazione di ospitalità within 48 hours.
9. 9Declare residenza at the anagrafe within 20 days of moving in.