Land registry

 do you have any papers from a notary regarding the sale and purchase of the property... would be my first question to what seems quite a strange story... and if so... you need to contact them and get the registered paperwork from them...auctions here in Teramo you need also to be a resident in order to buy a property ... via the court... did you buy the property or the agent....generally a property at auction has a notary assigned to the sale...  did you use that notary or the one of the agent or seemingly from the sound of your question no one...hopefully it is not the case that you paid the money to the agent and then they bought the house for you.... more details...    

When we purchased our house (not via auction though) the notary mentioned after she had done her work that we would still need to employ a geometra. We didn't have time to sort that out on that visit and it slipped our mind until we went to the comune to pay for our rubbish collection. They then brought up the subject of if we had registered the property. We then had to find a geometra who did all the necessary paperwork and registered it with the Agenzia dell territorio (land registry).

 at the final act you sign documents that clearly state the details of the property... all this has to be done before the act not after...the notary then registers the property the notary is the only person in italy allowed to validly transfer the title to property drafts the Purchase Deed (rogito), ensures its proper execution, registration, and payment of all Italian taxes  has something changed posted at same time...however yes go back to the notary...why pay a geometra for something that should have already been done... and pick up the registered transfer...rogito 

 should have said... once you have the registered act or if you have it go to the comune with it...you should have been told to do this and regsiter it at the comune for their calculation of ICI and garbage tax....  there will be tax due and a small fine for not doing this before i would imagine... plus you will be then billed yearly which i presume you have not been for your property in abruzzo... 

 These are very separate things.  The registering at the catasto has nothing to do with your agent - the registering of the act by the notaio should start the process, but occasinoally there are loopholes in the system.  If you have your act of provenance it requires only a simple 'segnalazione' to teh catasto, who will correct the error.  The important thing to remember here is that the catasto is not a legal proof of ownership - at least not in the vast majority of Italy.  There is no need for a geometra to handle this - the first port of call should be the notaio who handled the sale.   However, if you bought the property as a fabbricato rurale you will need a geometra to recatatasto the house as an ente urbano as the law now requires.   As regards registering you for ICI and other stuff - this is technically not legal work - I have helped clients with it in the past, but it is not part of an estate agents duties as defined by a compravendita, but services after the event.    As with nearly all things in Italy the onus is on the end user - you - to be registered for water, electricity, ICI and so on, there is no helpful reminder that comes through the post.  You have to know by osmosis how these things work.   My notaio alwasy tells clients at the moment of act that they should toddle off to the comune when they have a copy of the act to do these things.  It would have been helpful of the agent to explain but I would say it wasn't their duty to do so.  

...a better estate agent could have avoided all this to you! Who did you use? Harry Potter?