Superbonus half-works and irregular building sites: 4,000 apartment blocks are in limbo

Open-and-close' companies that sprang up overnight, after 2021, to ride the wave of the superbonus. They took orders, which they partly executed, and then left them half-finished. The condominiums, who commissioned these works, were left with the tail end of the many problems associated with these situations: deductions not accrued, sums to be paid in cash, tax credits used in a formally illegitimate manner, and possible future audits by the tax agency.

This is the dark side of the super-bonus, populated by the many buildings that have not managed to get to the bottom of an extremely complex procedure, in a very difficult market phase, in which between unscrupulous behaviour and true scams, then the buck has remained in the hands of the holders of the deductions: the owners of the buildings. In the absence of the long-awaited Salva condomini (Save condominiums) intervention, which was hypothesised for the tax decree but which will not even enter into conversion, dramatic situations remain to be dealt with for many citizens.

Statistics bear witness to this. The numbers in the Enea reports (updated to February 2026), which only analyse energy efficiency work (not earthquake-proofing), show that in all Italian apartment buildings, when the superbonus has effectively closed its doors, there is still a quota of work that has not been carried out: technically, this is work for which deductions have been booked through asseverations but which has not yet reached the finishing line. This is 2.7% of the superbonus works, which corresponds to a very high figure: EUR 2.3 billion. Estimating the number of apartment buildings affected because they have not completed the works, there are at least 4,000, but in reality, the figure is likely to be even higher.

These figures, however, do not say how difficult the impasse in which many citizens are finding themselves. Think of unfinished works. One of the essential requirements of the super-bonus, and of all house bonuses, is the material execution of the works for which the deduction is collected. For the former 110% (which was a rebate designed for energy efficiency), the works leading to the improvement of two energy classes of the building had to be closed. Those who did not close the works lost the right to the deduction.

Not only that, it also exposed itself to the challenges of the Inland Revenue, which could claim back the beneficiaries of the subsidised works for the rebates already collected. Through the mechanism of the works progress reports, in fact, it was possible to obtain advances of the tax rebate, usually to be used to pay the companies. Now the financial administration could demand the amount of the tax credit used illegitimately, but also sanctions and interest. Arriving at an unsustainable final bill for those who often never got that money.