Condominium meeting notice in Italy: deadlines, delivery, proxies

Where does the notice go if you own a flat in Liguria and live in Leeds? To whatever address the building has on file for you, by registered post, and quite possibly into a post-office drawer you will not open until August. Under Italian law the notice of a condominium meeting (avviso di convocazione) must be communicated at least five days before the date set for the first call, and only four channels count: registered post, certified email (PEC), fax or delivery by hand (article 66 of the implementing provisions of the civil code).

Ordinary email is not on the list. Neither is WhatsApp.

Five days, counted from a meeting nobody attends

Italian meetings are called twice. The first call needs a quorum so high that it is routinely left to fail, and the real meeting is the second call, which cannot be held on the same calendar day as the first and must take place within ten days of it (article 1136 of the civil code). The five days run back from the first date, the one on the notice that looks like a mistake (often late at night or at dawn). They are calendar days, weekends included, and what matters is the day the notice reaches you, since the law says "communicated" and not "sent". We worked the dates for a meeting whose first call is Monday 15 March 2027:

• Notice received by Wednesday 10 March at the latest, counting back five days and leaving out the meeting day
• Second call on any day from Tuesday 16 to Thursday 25 March
• Registered letter posted by Monday 1 March, because the delivery standard Poste Italiane publishes is five working days in 90% of cases and six in 98%

The law does not spell out how the five days are counted, so that first date is our reading of the text, and a careful administrator aims for a day earlier. Your building's rules cannot shorten the notice or add email as a valid channel: article 72 bars condominium regulations from departing from article 66. How the quorums differ between the two calls is covered in our guide to condominium assembly majorities in Italy.

The address on the register is the one that matters

Every administrator keeps a register of owners (anagrafe condominiale) with each owner's residence or domicile, and owners must report any change in writing within sixty days (article 1130, no. 6). That is where your notice is sent. Italian law treats a declaration as known once it arrives at the addressee's address, unless you prove that, through no fault of your own, you could not have learned of it (article 1335). An empty holiday flat is a poor place to receive legal post: by Poste Italiane's own figures, 31.1% of registered letters in 2023-2025 ended up waiting at the post office, where they are held for thirty days and then returned to the sender. The meeting will be long over by then.

So write to the administrator with the address where you really open your mail, and ask whether notices can go to a PEC mailbox. A PEC address is an Italian certified mailbox that gives the sender proof of delivery, and that proof exists only when the recipient has a PEC mailbox too. In small buildings that run themselves without an administrator, any owner can call the meeting, and the same four channels apply. A polite message in the group chat is welcome as a reminder, and it is not the notice.

Can you send someone in your place?

Yes, with a written proxy (article 67). Three limits are worth knowing before you sign one. The administrator cannot hold proxies for any meeting. In a building with more than twenty owners, one person cannot represent more than a fifth of the owners and of the building's value. And if you own the flat jointly with someone else, the two of you have one representative between you. A neighbour you trust is the usual choice.

Meetings can also be held by video. The notice must then name the platform and the time instead of a place, and the format needs the prior consent of a majority of the owners.

If the notice never reached you

A resolution passed after a missing, late or incomplete notice can be annulled, but only at the request of an owner who was not properly called. The time limit is thirty days (article 1137). If you voted against or abstained, it runs from the day of the meeting; if you were absent, it runs from the day the resolution is communicated to you.

That second clock is the one foreign owners miss. The minutes arrive at the same address as the notice did, the thirty days start, and a special levy for the roof can no longer be challenged on that ground while the envelope sits unopened. An incomplete notice counts as well: the agenda must be specific, so a large works contract cannot be voted under "any other business". What a professional charges to handle all this is in our piece on how much a condominium administrator costs in Italy. If your building is run by one of the owners, tools such as Vecinly, built for volunteer administrators and board members, keep the agenda and the accounts where every owner can read them from abroad, alongside the formal notice the law still requires.

Before the spring meeting season, send the administrator one written message with your current postal address and, if you have one, a PEC address. Keep a copy.

Information updated in October 2026. This article is for general information and is not legal advice.