We haven't got around to checking if the notary had the title updated yet. I don't have the notaries name handy. We had given power of attorney to HAI as we didn't want to have to fly back and forth from Canada for the signings so never met the notary. HAI seemed to do all the right things up until the end and then they seemed very confused and disorganized.
We dealt with the utilities ourselves as our house is in a very small village and the town office knew us by then, so transferring the water and sewer bill, garbage tax and ICI they did immediately. Power took us a bit (1 year) longer as my requests to ENEL on there website seemed to disappear. We finally had a local help us by phoning ENEL and ranting at them for half an hour which produced a contract for us to sign in about 6 weeks. The former owner paid the bill in the meantime and I reimbursed him. We had arranged with our bank in Pescara to recieve and pay this bill and it seems to be working now. The town won't forward the water, garbage or ICI bills to the bank nor will they send it to us in Calgary so a distant relative in the village recieves and pays them for us. HAI offered to help with the utility transfer but by then I preferred to do it myself so I knew it was done.
Our house was move in ready except for the addition of some furniture. We've had to do some minor repairs (leaky toilet) and some upgrading (change all the mattresses and bedding, pots and pans and most important a barbecue). We do have a bit of an advantage in that the village is so small (27 people) and as we've now found out they are all related to me in some way or another
(3rd, 4th and 5th cousins) that they have looked after us and our lack of Italian hasn't been much of a problem.