There is a piece of real estate Italy left suspended between scaffolding that has never been dismantled, facades begun and not finished, condominium assemblies transformed into domestic courts and families who, after having believed in the promise of the Superbonus, today find themselves faced with the most bitter part of the former 110%: no longer the idea of redevelopment at almost zero cost, no longer the story of energy efficiency as a great collective opportunity, but the very real risk of having to answer for incomplete works, disputed tax credits, sums recover and checks by the Revenue Agency.
The dark side of the Superbonus, the one left behind the scaffolding and under the rhetoric of the great public incentive, concerns thousands of Italian condominiums. According to Enea data updated to February 2026, when the 110% season can now be said to be substantially closed, there still remains a share of interventions booked through sworn statements but never actually reaching the finish line. This is 2.7% of the condominium works linked to the Superbonus for energy efficiency, equal to approximately 2.3 billion euros. Translated into real life: At least 4 thousand condominiums involved, although the actual figure may be higher.
The Superbonus and the bill left to the condominiums
The problem is not just technical, nor just fiscal. It is, first of all, a question of responsibility shifted downwards. In many cases, in fact, condominiums have relied on companies born suddenly after 2021, “open and close” companies that have intercepted the race for the Superbonus, acquired orders, started construction sites, collected advances or worked on progress reports and then, faced with regulatory complexity, increased costs, the squeeze on credit or opaque management, left everything half done.
However, it is not just the companies or professionals involved who pay the price for this short circuit. The greatest risk remains with the owners of the properties, i.e. the holders of the deductions. Today, they are the ones who find themselves with uncompleted work, interrupted thermal insulation, files to be reconstructed, unearned deductions, credits used in a potentially illegitimate way and, above all, the possibility of future disputes by the financial administration.
The point is simple, at least in its harshness: to be entitled to the Superbonus it was not enough to start a construction site, sign a document or book a deduction. It was necessary that the works were physically carried out and that the intervention reached the expected requirements, starting, in the case of energy efficiency, from the improvement of two energy classes of the building. Where this path has not been closed, the right to deduct may cease.
Incomplete work, missed deductions and tax audits
The situation becomes even more delicate when the work progress reports, the so-called Sal, come into play, through which it was possible to obtain advances on the tax discount to be used to pay the companies. If those works have not been completed, or if the works actually carried out do not correspond to what was declared, the tax credit already used may be considered undue.
In that case, the Revenue Agency could request not only the repayment of the disputed amount, but also penalties and interest. The result is a potentially very heavy bill for families who, often, have never physically collected that money, because the mechanism of the invoice discount and the transfer of credit had the effect of shifting the financial management of the benefit between companies, banks, intermediaries and the State.
It is here that the Superbonus shows its deepest fracture: an incentive created to make otherwise very expensive interventions accessible risks transforming, for some of the beneficiaries, into an administrative and financial trap. Not because everyone acted in bad faith, but because the machine turned out to be fragile, complex, exposed to opportunistic behavior and, in several cases, to real irregularities.
Irregular construction sites and materials counted but not installed
Alongside the half-finished works, there is also the issue of irregular construction sites and procedural discrepancies. The problem arises when what has actually been achieved does not coincide with what is indicated in the statements or communications transmitted. Even in these cases, the consequence may be the loss of the bonus due to the lack of the subjective or objective requirements required by the law.
One of the most controversial issues also concerns the counting, in the Sal, of the materials delivered to the construction site but not yet installed. To meet the 110% deadlines, in many cases some products would have been considered as part of the work progress even though they had not actually been assembled. A method of calculation that today ends up at the center of disputes and which risks opening up new fronts for tax recovery.
The point, once again, is that condominiums end up in the crosshairs. Even when the problem arises from a disappeared company, from a superficial technician, from an evaporated general contractor or from a chain of responsibility that is difficult to reconstruct, the beneficiary of the benefit remains the owner. And it is on him that the heaviest consequences can fall.
The failure to “Save condominiums” and the political vacuum
Making the picture even more complicated is the absence of the expected “Save condominiums” intervention, hypothesized as part of the tax decree but destined not to even enter into conversion. A lack of response that leaves thousands of citizens in a gray area: too exposed to feel safe, too fragmented to have an effective collective defense, too dependent on papers, sworn statements, expert reports and cross-responsibilities to be able to quickly close the matter.
The Superbonus, which for years has been described as the great tool for relaunching construction and energy redevelopment, thus shows its most cumbersome legacy: not only the cost for public finances, not only the season of fraud, not only the disorderly rush to construction sites, but a long trail of blocked condominiums, worried owners and practices that risk turning into disputes.
For many families today, the question is no longer how much 110% would have saved, but how much it might cost not to have closed it correctly. And this is perhaps the most merciless snapshot of a measure which, created to lighten the financial burden of the home, in thousands of cases risks leaving behind the exact opposite: unfinished work, potential debts and a fiscal fear destined to last for a long time.
