Ok, so far, the steps have been.
- Pick out a House
- Have the preliminary contract completed and filed and the down payment made.
The next step will be to complete the house purchase. And because we don’t want to have to fly back to Italy just to sign documents, we are having a special power of attorney prepared. It is called a Procura Speciale. It will assign specific power of attorney to our agent allowing them to act on our behalf in the matter of the final purchase of the house.
The steps for this were.
- The Notario in Italy prepared a document listing all the legal specifics of the house
- We hired a certified translator in the US to prepare the final Procure and to provide us with an official English translation of it.
I had done research before, and nowhere could I find any examples of what a Procura Speciale should look like. Like it was some huge secret. So, here is copy of mine, with all the personal information blacked out. procura speciale
The document needs to be signed and notarized in the State where you live. Then, you need to send this notarized document to your Secretary of State to have an Apostille attached. You will want to look up the Secretary of State website to make sure you comply with all the specific requirement for the document. There was a hitch with ours. The State of Wisconsin sent it back with a generic rejection checklist. It appears that Wisconsin feels they should override certified translations, and has an undisclosed rule that the document must only have the English words for “Notary Public”. I have a suspicion that they thought the translation was for Spanish as they included a generic Spanish rejection notice.
After consulting the company with who I contracted for the Procura, they scrubbed the words. “Notaio Pubblico Statunitense” and replaced it with the English words “Notary Public”
Off it went again to the Sec of State in Wisconsin.
This worked and I sent the documents off to my agent in Italy and the purchase proceeded. We did a bank transfer of the purchase amounts to the notaio in Italy and next thing you know, we own a house in Italy!
