Milan's Digital Property Archive Has a Duplicate Image Problem — and Residents Are Paying for It

A growing backlog of duplicate images embedded in Milan's municipal property records — the Catasto system administered through the Agenzia delle Entrate offices on Via Manin — is causing measurable disruption for residents trying to buy, sell, or renovate homes across the city. The problem is not abstract. Estate agents operating in Porta Nuova, Navigli, and Isola report that conveyancing processes are routinely stalled when planning documents carry mismatched or duplicated floor-plan photographs that fail automated validation checks, pushing completion timelines back by weeks.

The timing matters because Milan is operating under an accelerated construction and renovation schedule tied to the Milan-Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics infrastructure programme. Dozens of residential and commercial properties in the arc between Piazzale Loreto and the Santa Giulia district have required planning submissions since early 2025, compressing the window in which cadastral errors need to be caught and corrected. A single duplicate image flagged late in the process can freeze a sale while the Agenzia delle Entrate issues a correction order — a process that, under current workloads, can take between 30 and 60 working days.

What Goes Wrong and Where It Hits Hardest

The technical root of the issue is straightforward. When property owners or their geometri — the licensed surveyors who file most Italian cadastral updates — submit DOCFA forms (the standard document for cadastral variation), the system accepts image attachments in multiple formats. Duplicate uploads occur when files are resubmitted after a timeout error without the original being purged, or when a geometra's studio migrates software and bulk-exports records with repeated assets. The Catasto database does not, by default, run a deduplication pass before accepting a submission.

Corso Buenos Aires and the surrounding Loreto neighbourhood have seen a concentration of cases because the area has a high density of older apartment buildings whose records were digitised rapidly between 2018 and 2021 under a national digitisation push. Digitisation done at speed, without rigorous image-quality control, left a legacy of near-identical scans logged under separate reference numbers. The Ordine dei Geometri della Provincia di Milano, the professional body based in Via Carducci, has been fielding a rising volume of queries from members asked to untangle these records, particularly for ground-floor commercial units in buildings straddling the residential-commercial boundary.

For ordinary residents the cost is not merely inconvenience. Notarial fees in Milan currently average between €2,500 and €4,500 for a standard residential sale, and delays that push a closing date past a mortgage rate-lock window can expose buyers to rate re-pricing. In a market where the average asking price per square metre in the Brera and Moscova neighbourhoods exceeded €7,000 in the first quarter of 2026, even a fractional rate movement on a €500,000 mortgage translates into thousands of euros over a loan's life.

What Residents and Property Owners Can Do Now

The most practical step available to anyone preparing to sell or renovate is to commission a visura catastale — a certified extract of the cadastral record — at least 90 days before any planned transaction. The extract, available at Agenzia delle Entrate branches or through the online Sister portal, costs €1 per query and will reveal whether duplicate plan images are registered against a property's folio. If duplicates appear, a corrective DOCFA submission filed promptly, before any notarial date is fixed, avoids the worst delays.

The Comune di Milano's Sportello Unico per l'Edilizia, housed at Via // Confalonieri in the Porta Nuova administrative zone, has also begun running monthly drop-in sessions where homeowners can cross-reference their building permits against cadastral records. The sessions, introduced in March 2026 as part of the Olympics-period urban management package, are free and open without appointment on the first Tuesday of each month. The next session falls on 7 July 2026.

Whether the Agenzia delle Entrate will implement automated deduplication at the point of DOCFA submission is currently under discussion at the national level as part of a broader modernisation of the Catasto system expected to roll into effect before the end of 2027. Until then, the fix remains, for now, largely manual — and largely the resident's problem to catch first.