What is the APE and when must you receive it?
The owner must make the APE available to the prospective buyer when negotiations start and hand it over at the end; the deed of sale contains a clause on the APE and attaches it (art. 6 D.Lgs. 192/2005).
What the law says
- In a sale the owner produces the APE, if the property does not already have a valid one.
- Sale listings show the energy performance indices and the energy class.
- In the deed the buyer declares having received the information and the APE, which is attached; without the declaration or the attachment, the parties face a fine of 3,000 to 18,000 euros.
- The APE is valid for at most ten years and must be updated after works that change the energy class.
- The law excludes some cases (art. 3(3) D.Lgs. 192/2005), for example garages, cellars and stores without installations, detached buildings under 50 m², buildings declared unfit or derelict and some protected buildings.
A purchase involves other steps too, such as the purchase taxes and the difference between offer, preliminary contract and deed. What a dossier on an address costs is on the Dossier Immobile pricing page. You can work out the taxes you would pay with the free purchase tax calculator.
Where to find an existing APE
ENEA’s national SIAPE register mainly publishes statistics. In Lombardy the CENED certificates are open data by address; Trentino publishes OpenAPE.
What Dossier Immobile does
The dossier does not show the APE: it reminds you to ask the seller for it before the offer, because the seller must make it available when negotiations start. In Lombardy you can also look it up in the CENED register.
Does the APE say whether the house is in order?
No: it describes the building’s energy use, not whether it complies with building rules.
Sources
Dossier Immobile is a private service by SRI Group BV (VAT BE1037052239), not connected to any public authority: it brings together public data, with the source and date of every item.
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