The Rent to Buy in Italy: Mater artium necessitas

The paper analyzes the legal issues of rent-to-buy contracts which are mostly preferred in times of crises due to the lack of liquidity and the increased difficulty in obtaining credit for house purchase. Scholars qualify these agreements as a sale subject to a deferred payment and constant installments. The complexity of the bargain could lead to reflect alternatively on two independent and autonomous yet connected contracts or a new contract, characterized by its unique and original purpose (“causa”). Indeed, the essential articulation of the monthly option credit and the monthly rent amount is a typical pattern in rent-to-buy agreements. Unsurprisingly, Art. 23 of the Law Decree n. 133 of 12 September 2014 makes a clear choice for the latter: a single contractual sequence composed of two elements, one of which is merely accidental. The author also points out that the new type of contract is part of a series of contracts of enjoyment finalized upon the subsequent purchase. The phenomenon is carefully analyzed in practice, based also on the experience and the debate in France, Germany and the United States