The short answer
Yes, and it does not require you to wait two years. Most Italian banks assess self-employed income on two to three full years of filed returns, normally taking the lower of a two-year average and the most recent year — applied literally, that rule leaves this profile with nothing to be assessed on. But some lenders will assess the income on continuity instead: on the age of the working relationship behind the invoices, rather than the date your Italian VAT number was issued. Documented properly, the file can be assessed before you have filed a single Italian tax return.
Who this actually is
The reasons for the move vary and rarely have anything to do with work: a favourable tax regime, a partner who lives here, a life you want. What is consistent is what happens next. The company you worked for wants to keep you, but setting up Italian payroll for one person, or drafting a formal secondment, is more structure than it has or more effort than it will make. So you register a partita IVA and carry on — same client, same work, often the same income, now invoiced instead of paid as salary.
Some people in this position are Italians coming home from abroad; many are not Italian at all. It makes no difference to how a bank reads the file. What does make a difference is the combination that lands on the underwriter's desk: you are resident, but only recently; your VAT number is new; and you have either no Italian tax return yet or exactly one. Each of those on its own is manageable. Together, under the standard rule, they produce an automatic decline — which is why so many people in this position are told to come back in two years, and quite a few believe it.
How a bank reads your situation
Not every new partita IVA is the same file. The table below is the fastest way to see which one you are, because the distinction that matters is not how long the VAT number has existed — it is whether there is a documented history behind it.
| Your situation | How a bank reads it | Realistic LTV | What decides it |
|---|---|---|---|
| New partita IVA invoicing your former employer, no Italian return yet | Assessable on continuity, at the right lender | 50–60% | How the file is presented, and around six months of steady invoicing |
| Same, with one Italian return filed | Stronger — the return corroborates the invoices | 50–60%, occasionally above | Whether the declared income supports the instalment |
| New partita IVA, clients found after the move | A genuine start-up file | Standard rule applies | Two to three years of returns — waiting is usually the honest advice |
| Buying with an Italian-resident employed co-borrower | An employee file with a second income | Up to 80% | Whether the employed income nearly qualifies on its own |
| Two or three Italian returns already filed | An ordinary self-employed file | Up to 80% as a resident | The usual self-employed assessment |
The third row is the one worth being honest about. If you opened a partita IVA and then went looking for clients, there is no prior relationship to point at, the continuity argument does not exist, and the standard two-to-three-year rule genuinely applies. That is a different guide — the full mechanics of how Italian banks assess self-employed income covers it, along with everything that applies once you do have returns to show.
What continuity actually means
Continuity is not a status you claim; it is something you evidence. The lenders that will assess income this way ask for a specific set of documents, and each one answers a different question:
- The employment contracts you held in your country of origin, backed by the tax returns you filed there. These establish how long the relationship and the income level have actually existed — usually years before the Italian registration date the underwriter would otherwise be looking at.
- The contract behind your current partita IVA. This shows the same counterpart and the same work under a new legal form. It is what connects the history to the present.
- Invoices issued at a regular rhythm since the move. These show the income is genuinely flowing, at the level the contract implies, on a schedule.
Any one of the three on its own is weak. Taken together they answer the only question the underwriter really has, which is whether this is a new income or an old income wearing new paperwork. Documented that way, the file can be assessed with no Italian tax return filed at all.
How much invoicing history is enough
There is no formal threshold, and anyone who quotes you one is inventing it. In practice, around six months of continuous invoicing is close to the minimum that makes the conversation worth having. What matters more than the count is the rhythm: invoices issued steadily month after month read very differently from the same total bunched into two or three payments, because the whole point of the exercise is to show a stable flow rather than a sum.
The timeline is not the standard one
This is the expectation most worth resetting early. The 60–90 days a normal Italian mortgage takes is not a realistic figure for this profile: plan for several months. And the extra time is not administrative slowness — a bank assessing income on continuity will often wait, deliberately, to see two or three more invoices land at the same rhythm before it decides. The waiting is the assessment.
The practical consequence is the most useful planning move available here: open the conversation while your invoicing history is still building, not the week your offer is accepted. A file that has been in preparation for four months and is submitted with eight months of invoices behind it is a different proposition from the same file submitted cold.
The five variables that decide it
Five things decide the outcome:
- How the file is presented. Which lender sees it, in what order, with the continuity argument made up front rather than discovered halfway through.
- The LTV you ask for. This profile sits far more comfortably around 50–60% than at the ceiling. Asking for the maximum is one of the most common reasons a workable case turns into a decline.
- The property. A standard apartment in a liquid market with a clean cadastral position gives the appraiser an easy job; anything unusual adds a second layer of scrutiny to a file that already has one.
- The instalment-to-income ratio. The usual ceiling is around 35% of net income, and there is less room to argue at the edge on this profile than on an employed one.
- What you actually do for a living. Work that is obviously ongoing and obviously in demand reads differently from work that looks project-shaped.
These are the variables an advisor exists to manage. Approaching the wrong bank with the right documents produces exactly the same decline as approaching it with the wrong ones — and a decline recorded against you makes the next attempt harder, which is the real cost of trying this alone.
Buying with someone else changes the arithmetic
If you are not buying alone, the picture is materially different. Where there is more than one borrower, the one bringing the main income determines how the bank frames the whole operation: a file led by an Italian-resident employee with a recent partita IVA alongside it is underwritten as an employee file with a second income, not as a self-employed file. Where both incomes are solid, lenders weight the two. And where this profile supports a resident employee who almost qualifies on their own, 80% comes back into range.
The 50–60% band is therefore a ceiling on this income assessed by itself, not a ceiling on the household. It is worth establishing which of the two you are before you decide what you can afford to offer.
What to do, and in what order
- Before you move, collect the paperwork. Employment contracts and filed tax returns from your country of origin are far easier to obtain while you are still there and still in touch with a payroll department.
- Keep the invoicing rhythm steady. Regular monthly invoices are evidence; the same money in occasional lumps is not.
- Decide the tax regime with your commercialista before the file goes in, not after. The regime you register under changes the income figure that appears on your return, and the return is what a lender reads.
- Coordinate residency deliberately. Prima casa and the resident LTV both depend on where and when your residence is registered — see coordinating residency and the mortgage.
- Check whether the move is also a fiscal one. The Impatriati regime applies to self-employment income too, and is worth claiming from the first year rather than discovering later.
- Start the mortgage conversation early. Not because a decision can be made early, but because the months you spend building history are months a file can be built alongside it.
Already have two or three Italian returns? The guide to how Italian banks assess self-employed income → covers the ordinary case.
Buying in Milan? This profile is the second of five in the Milan buyer's guide →.
Relocating and unsure whether your partita IVA is old enough to be assessed? Book a free 30-minute call → and we will look at what you can document, not at what the standard rule says.
Frequently asked questions
Yes, at some lenders. The default rule is that Italian banks want two to three full years of filed tax returns before they will consider self-employed income, and normally take the lower of a two-year average and the most recent year — applied literally, that leaves a partita IVA opened this year with nothing to assess. Some lenders will instead look at the age of the underlying working relationship: if you were an employee of the same company abroad and now invoice it as a contractor, the income is not new, only the paperwork is. That is the argument, and it has to be documented before it is made.
No, not necessarily. Documented on continuity — foreign employment contracts, the tax returns you filed abroad, the contract behind the current partita IVA and invoices issued at a regular rhythm — the file can be assessed before you have filed a single Italian return. This is the point most applicants are told is impossible, and it is the single most useful thing to know about this profile. A first Italian return, once it exists, corroborates the invoices and makes the file easier, but it is not a precondition.
There is no formal threshold, but around six months of continuous invoicing is close to the practical minimum. What matters is the rhythm rather than the count: invoices issued steadily month after month read very differently from the same total bunched into two or three payments. Expect the bank to keep watching after you apply, too — part of the wait is deliberate, and more history accumulating during the process works in your favour.
Three things, together. First, the employment contracts you held in your country of origin, backed by the tax returns you filed there — these establish how long the relationship and the income level have existed. Second, the contract behind your current partita IVA, which shows the same counterpart and the same work under a new legal form. Third, invoices issued at a regular rhythm since the move, which show the income is actually flowing. Any one of the three on its own is weak; the three together answer the underwriter's real question, which is whether this is a new income or an old income wearing new paperwork.
On this income assessed by itself, plan for 50–60% loan-to-value rather than the ceiling. That is not a published cap — it is where the file sits comfortably, and asking for the maximum is one of the most common reasons a workable case turns into a decline. If you are buying with someone else the arithmetic changes: where a co-borrower brings solid employed income the two are weighted, and where this profile supports an Italian-resident employee who almost qualifies on their own, 80% comes back into range.
Several months. The 60–90 days a standard Italian mortgage takes is not a realistic expectation here, and the reason is not administrative: a lender assessing income on continuity will often wait to see two or three more invoices land at the same rhythm before deciding. The waiting is the assessment. The practical consequence is to open the conversation while your invoicing history is still building, rather than the week your offer is accepted.
It matters a great deal, and in your favour. A partita IVA invoicing a company you previously worked for as an employee has a documented history behind it — years of contracts and filed returns that predate the Italian registration. A partita IVA invoicing clients you found after the move has none, and is assessed as a genuine start-up: there, the standard two-to-three-year rule applies and waiting is usually the honest advice. Same legal status, entirely different file.
The lending practices described here are those I see in the Italian market in 2026. They are not published criteria — no bank advertises a continuity assessment — and they vary by lender and change over time. Nothing on this page is a commitment that a particular file will be approved.