Italy Digital Nomad Visa: How to Deal With the 12-Month Lease Problem in Cagliari

Some Italian consulates ask for a registered rental agreement covering the entire length of the visa, before the visa itself has even been approved. So what does that actually mean, how can you register a lease while you’re still living abroad, and could a temporary rental agreement help if you’re planning to move to Cagliari?

If you’re thinking about applying for Italy’s Digital Nomad Visa and moving to Sardinia, sooner or later you may run into a fairly absurd requirement: finding and renting a home in Italy before you even know whether you’ll actually be allowed to live in Italy. The landlord wants to know whether you have a visa, while the consulate wants to know where you’ll be living before granting you one.

First, I want to make one thing clear: I’m not an immigration expert or a legal adviser. I became interested in this issue because I found a lot of confusion online, especially around the accommodation requirement for people hoping to move to my city. So I decided to dig into it properly and put together the official sources and local rules that may actually be useful if you’re planning to spend a medium- or long-term period in Cagliari (or Sardinia more generally).

The situation is a little less complicated than it may seem after reading forums and digital nomad groups. There are two important things to understand:

• a 12-month rental agreement is not written into the national rules as a blanket requirement;
• a rental agreement can still be registered when the future tenant lives abroad and does not yet have an Italian tax code (Codice Fiscale).

There’s also something worth knowing if you’re planning to settle in Cagliari: a new local agreement covering regulated and temporary rental contracts has been in force since 2026, and it may offer a few useful options for people staying for a limited period. We’ll get into that properly below.

The 12-month requirement doesn’t come directly from Italian law

This is the first thing worth clearing up, because it’s often described — and especially interpreted — inaccurately online. The Decree of 29 February 2024 that implemented Italy’s Digital Nomad and Remote Worker Visa requires applicants to provide suitable documentation showing their accommodation arrangements. It does not, however, establish a general rule saying that every applicant must provide a 12-month rental agreement.

The problem starts when you move from the national rules to the instructions issued by individual consulates. Some offices, including New York and Boston, require a residential lease in the applicant’s name, registered with the Italian Revenue Agency and covering the entire duration of the visa. In these cases, a hotel booking or a simple letter of hospitality is not considered sufficient. The Consulate General of Italy in New York explains this requirement on its Digital Nomad / Remote Worker Visa page, which is available in English.

Guidance published by the Italian Embassy in Tbilisi in 2026 follows a similar approach and requires accommodation to be available for the entire period of the stay. So if you’re applying for a one-year stay and your consulate requires your accommodation to cover the full visa period, in practice you’ll need to find a home with a lease covering all 12 months before you even know whether your visa will be approved.

As I mentioned earlier, though, this is not the same everywhere. Other Italian consulates accept different forms of proof of accommodation. So the first thing to do is work out exactly what the consulate handling your application requires.

Finding a home before you have the visa: is it actually possible?

Let’s assume you’re one of the unlucky ones and your consulate really does expect you to have a registered rental agreement covering the whole year before your visa is issued.

At that point, you’d have to find a home in Cagliari while you’re still in your own country, potentially thousands of kilometres away. And scrolling through property listings until you find an apartment you like isn’t enough: you also need a landlord willing to sign and register a lease with someone who doesn’t yet live in Italy and doesn’t even know for certain whether their visa will be approved. Unfortunately, Cagliari — and I can say this from personal experience — is already a difficult city in which to find a rental when you’re actually here. I can only imagine what it’s like trying to do it from abroad.

There’s another potential problem in Sardinia because tourism plays such a big role in the rental market: an apartment may simply not be available for 12 consecutive months. A listing that just says “available from October” doesn’t tell you whether that property will actually solve your visa problem. In these cases, I’d ask immediately whether the lease runs through the summer or ends before the tourist season begins.

No Codice Fiscale yet? The lease can still be registered

So, let’s say you’ve finally found a possible solution, only for the landlord or estate agent to tell you that the lease can’t be registered because you don’t have an Italian Codice Fiscale yet. That’s not necessarily true. Resolution No. 5/E of 14 February 2023 from the Italian Revenue Agency clarified that when the tenant is a non-resident and does not have an Italian tax code, the rental agreement can still be registered.

In this situation, the standard online procedure used when the tenant already has an Italian tax code is not used. Instead, the lease can be registered at a local office of the Italian Revenue Agency using Form 69 (Modello 69) and the tenant’s personal details: name, surname, date and place of birth, and overseas address.

In other words, you don’t necessarily have to get the visa first, arrive in Italy and obtain a Codice Fiscale before the rental agreement can be registered.

Of course, having one can still make the process easier, so it may be worth trying to get your Codice Fiscale before you move. The Italian Revenue Agency states that someone who does not yet have a Codice Fiscale can submit Form AA4/8 together with a copy of their ID by email or certified email (PEC), without having to go to an office in person. The certificate is then sent back through the same channel.

If you’re living abroad, you can also authorise someone in Italy to submit the request to the Italian Revenue Agency on your behalf. In certain circumstances, the request can also be handled through the Italian consulate responsible for your area, although the exact procedure can vary between consulates. The Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs explains the available options here for obtaining a Codice Fiscale from abroad.

The temporary rental agreement

If your plan is to live in Cagliari for the period covered by a one-year visa, a temporary rental agreement (contratto transitorio) is one of the first options I’d look at, as this type of contract is specifically designed for temporary housing needs.

Since March 2026, Cagliari has had a new local rental agreement (Accordo Territoriale) covering regulated residential leases, including temporary contracts. These agreements can run for up to 18 months and must be based on a genuine temporary housing need. The agreement mentions situations such as temporary work transfers, study and job seeking, but it also allows for other temporary circumstances linked to a specific event with a defined duration.

It’s true that the Digital Nomad Visa is not specifically listed among the reasons mentioned in the agreement, but moving to Italy on a visa with a clear expiry date is obviously temporary in nature. So it’s an option worth discussing with whoever is drawing up the lease, without assuming that it will automatically qualify in every case.

The agreement needs to explain why the rental is temporary and, where required, that reason must be supported by documentation. In my own case, when signing a temporary rental agreement in Cagliari, a self-declaration explaining the reason for the temporary move was enough. I wouldn’t assume that this will always be the case, though, as the documents required can depend on the individual situation and on how the lease is structured.

How to make your offer more attractive to a landlord

Convincing a landlord to sign a lease with someone who doesn’t yet live in Italy and often can’t provide the usual guarantees expected from an Italian tenant may not be easy (and believe me, it isn’t always easy in person either).

That said, a properly structured temporary rental agreement can also work well for the landlord and, in some cases, may even come with tax advantages for the owner. You don’t necessarily need to get involved in the details, but it’s worth knowing this if a landlord is hesitant about the type of contract you’re asking for.

Another option, if you have enough cash available, is to offer to pay several months of rent in advance. In expat and visa applicant communities, I’ve seen people say they offered six or even twelve months upfront to make their application more attractive and provide the landlord with some additional reassurance.

Obviously, this is not a visa requirement and it isn’t a standard rule for renting in Sardinia. But it may make your proposal more attractive to a landlord who is being asked to commit their property to someone in such an unusual situation.

It may also help to explain another part of your financial situation. To obtain the Digital Nomad Visa, you can’t simply claim that you work online: applicants must prove that they have an adequate income from lawful sources and provide evidence of their professional activity. The New York Consulate’s official page, for example, lists the income and professional evidence required from applicants in its jurisdiction.

This doesn’t replace any guarantees a landlord may ask you for, but it can still help during negotiations. You can explain that the visa process itself already requires you to provide official evidence of your income and employment or professional activity, rather than simply approaching the landlord as a complete stranger trying to reserve an apartment from the other side of the world.

What if the visa is refused?

One solution you’ll sometimes see suggested online is to sign the lease with a condition precedent: essentially, the agreement would only take effect if the visa is approved. This is a real mechanism under Italian civil law, but in the consular instructions I’ve checked I haven’t found any general confirmation that a lease structured this way will definitely be accepted as proof of accommodation.

For that reason, I wouldn’t build your entire application around this solution without first getting an answer from your consulate. In Cagliari, however, the new local rental agreement offers another potentially useful option. The lease can give the tenant a right to withdraw with a much shorter notice period than usual. The Cagliari Accordo Territoriale specifically allows the maximum rent to be increased by 5% when the tenant can withdraw with just 15 days’ notice, or by 3% when the notice period is between one and three months.

This isn’t a true “visa rejection clause”, but it can give both you and the landlord a relatively quick way out of the agreement if things don’t go as planned.

Can Airbnb, a hotel or a hospitality letter be enough?

Unfortunately, once again, there isn’t one answer that applies to everyone. In New York and Boston, for example, hotel bookings and simple offers of hospitality do not meet the accommodation requirement listed in their Digital Nomad Visa checklists. In the case of the New York Consulate, the official page explicitly states that a hotel reservation or an offer of accommodation from a third party will not be accepted.

Other Italian consulates use different criteria and may accept other forms of private accommodation. This is why experiences on Reddit and other forums can seem completely contradictory: two people may have obtained exactly the same type of visa using different documents simply because they applied through different consulates.

How I’d look for a rental in Sardinia from abroad

If your consulate really does require a registered lease covering the entire length of your stay, this is how I’d approach it:

For the actual house hunt, the three Italian property websites I’d start with are Idealista, Immobiliare.it and Subito. Local Facebook groups dedicated to rentals in Cagliari can also be useful, especially for finding listings posted directly by owners, but I’d keep my eyes open and apply the same checks you would anywhere else before sending documents or money to someone you don’t know.

For this particular search, I’d avoid websites clearly aimed at holiday rentals and short tourist stays. They’re usually easy to recognise from nightly or weekly prices, very short booking periods and hotel-style services included in the price. That’s a completely different type of accommodation from the residential lease you’re looking for here, and it will often be considerably more expensive if you’re planning to stay for months.

If you’re not sure which part of the city to look at, I’ve also written a separate guide to where to stay in Cagliari. It was written mainly to help visitors choose the right area, but the differences between Cagliari’s neighbourhoods are just as useful when you’re looking for a longer-term base.

1. check your consulate’s checklist. If the accommodation requirement isn’t clear, ask for written confirmation;
2. ask specifically for a registered 12-month temporary rental agreement, rather than simply looking for something advertised as “long term”;
3. explain why you need it from the start. The landlord or estate agent should know that the contract will be used for a Digital Nomad Visa application;
4. if you’re told that the lease cannot be registered without a Codice Fiscale, point them to Italian Revenue Agency Resolution 5/E/2023;
5. think about what guarantees you can offer. If you don’t have an Italian payslip, you can explain that the visa already requires you to document your income and professional activity and, if it’s financially realistic for you, consider paying some rent upfront — while taking all the necessary precautions to avoid scams;
6. look at the withdrawal clause. Cagliari’s new local agreement allows for contracts with very short notice periods;
7. check everything before paying. The landlord’s identity, ownership or authority to rent the property, whether the property is genuinely available, the wording of the lease, how it will be registered, and the cancellation or refund terms.

The Catch-22 is real, but it isn’t impossible to manage

So yes, the accommodation problem with Italy’s Digital Nomad Visa is real. At some Italian consulates, you may genuinely be asked to commit to a home before you even know whether you’ll be allowed to move here, although, as we’ve seen, there is no single rule that applies everywhere.

Before trusting something you’ve read on a forum or online community, booking months of accommodation or sending thousands of euros to a landlord you’ve never met, check exactly what proof of accommodation the consulate handling your application requires. Then you can work from there, using the options and practical steps I’ve tried to pull together above.

I hope this guide has been useful. And if you do eventually make it to Cagliari, maybe one day we’ll end up having a beer together in Piazza Yenne 🙂