Galdes penthouse developers leased 104 properties to Housing Authority

The group of companies from which Affordable Housing Minister Roderick Galdes bought a €140,000 penthouse and garage leased 104 properties to the Housing Authority in 2024, the same year in which he signed the promise of sale for the Gozo property.

Times of Malta revealed on Sunday that Galdes had bought the two-bedroom shell penthouse and garage from Excel Investments, a company owned by developers Joseph Portelli, Mark Agius and Daniel Refalo, earlier this year.

In November 2024, Excel Housing, a subsidiary of Excel Investments, leased five apartment blocks, for a total of 104 apartments, maisonettes and penthouses to the Housing Authority under a government housing scheme, to be used as social housing.

Earlier that year, Galdes, whose portfolio includes the Housing Authority, signed a promise of sale agreement to buy a shell form duplex penthouse and garage for €140,000 from the same group. This sale was finalised in January 2025, two months after the group had agreed to lease its properties to the Housing Authority. The properties were leased for 10 years, as is typical of the social housing scheme.

The leased properties include a block in Gżira and four others across Gozo, in Sannat, San Lawrenz, Victoria and Xagħra. According to the group’s financial records, the leased properties have a total value of €27.2 million.

Under the housing scheme, known as Nikru biex Nassistu (We lease to help), private owners approach the Housing Authority expressing their interest in leasing their property to the authority, to be used for social housing. The authority, in turn, sublets the property to low-income tenants, covering part of the rent.

Housing Authority documents indicate it entered into 203 agreements with private property owners as part of the scheme throughout 2024, with another 35 existing contracts being renewed.

The scheme was renewed for another year in August, with Galdes saying the government had spent over €38 million on the scheme, which now provides homes for 1,300 families, since its introduction in 2017.

Replying to a parliamentary question by Nationalist MP Ivan Bartolo in June, Galdes said 144 private properties in Gozo had been leased to the Housing Authority for this purpose since 2020, with 53 properties in Gozo being leased in 2024.

The government is paying between €3,520 and €9,417 for each property, Galdes said.

2022 election

The Ħal Gelmus complex in which Galdes’s penthouse and garage is located spent almost two decades on the shelf, before being granted a planning permit just days ahead of the 2022 general election.

Planning documents show how developer Mark Agius first applied for a permit to demolish a tomato paste factory on the site and replace it with apartments, garages and a supermarket in December 2005. Years passed before the plans picked up throughout 2012, only for them to seemingly be shelved again the following year.

The plans were revived in 2019, with talks once again dragging on over the next three years. The project was eventually granted a permit on March 23, 2022, three days before Malta went to the polls.

Galdes previously told Times of Malta he had “reserved” the property in 2021, at a time when it had not yet been awarded a permit.

In 2024, the developers received a welcome boost, after an application to add a further 35 units to the block was approved, despite objections from the superintendence for cultural heritage.

The project did not go as smoothly as developers may have hoped, with the Building and Construction Authority halting work on two separate occasions throughout 2024 and 2025, citing a blocked bank guarantee and expired insurance.

‘Imprecise’ statements

Galdes yesterday again rejected allegations of hobnobbing with contractors, citing the denial already made by the Malita Investments board of directors.

With regard to his property in Gozo, he said “imprecise” statements were being made. It was no penthouse but a four-room flat covering an area of 84 square metres, he insisted and, furthermore, it made no sense comparing the price of a Gozo property in 2021 with that prevailing today.

He also said that his declarations of assets have been published every year since 2004 when he first made it to parliament.