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There is a notaio on the forum who would be the right expert to answer this. However your partner could possibly buy this property and then you buy the next one? Just a thought, hopefully the experts will respond to this for you!

[QUOTE=Will Bialey]We do not own a property in England and will be living in Italy for 6 months starting in febuary (rogito must be signed by jan 31st).
We've been told that as our house in Italy is relatively cheap (34000) that it might be worth to buy it as a second home and pay the full 10% tax as the differenece between this and the 3% is not much on a cheap property like ours. The benefit of this would be that we may want to buy a more expensive home, for which the difference would be greater, in years to come.
My question is in two parts;
Firstly, would we be entitled to use the 3% first house tax break on a future property even though it would actually be our 2nd house purchase in Italy.
Secondly, if we do decide to use the 3% option, is 6 months going to be long enough to claim residency (and therefor have the option of using the 3%).
Cheers, Will[/QUOTE]

Hi Will, to give an answer at your questions isn't so easy, not for legal reasons, but essentially because it dependes on your future projects in Italy.
If you buy an house in Italy, you can buy it as "first house" only if:
a) it's a non luxury house
b) you are resident (or going to be) in the town where the house is
c) you have no other houses in that town (unless the new one is going to be added to the old one)
d) you have no other houses in Italy, bought with the tax benefits of "first house".

So if you now buy an house without "prima casa" benefits, you'll be able to buy another house in the future with that benefit, only if the new house will be in another town.
On the other hand, if you now buy as "prima casa" and your project is to sell this house in the future, in order to buy a bigger one, it might be useful to buy it the benefit, because when you'll sell it (before purchasing the new one as prima casa) the taxes you're going to pay with the present purchase will be deducted from the taxes you'll pay for the second one, if you buy it within one year from the selling

Thanks notiao, just one thing left unanswered...Is the 6 months i live there before moving back going to be long enough to claim residency? thanks again, Will

[QUOTE=Will Bialey]Thanks notiao, just one thing left unanswered...Is the 6 months i live there before moving back going to be long enough to claim residency? thanks again, Will[/QUOTE]

I think I aswered in another thread, but may be I'm wrong.
It all depends on how long it takes for your local comune to control your residency.
If they are quick enough, you can ask residency when you sign the contract and wait for the controls to be done in the next mounths.
After you've got residency, nobody will ever have interest on it.
It's different, of course, if you wont to bring back your residency in UK, because in this case it should be better to wait at least 3 years.

I'll be coming back to start university after the 6 months of living in Italy, so i guess im stuck with 10% tax. Many thnaks for all your help : ) Will