Malta’s development lobby has pushed back against talk of a slowing property market and said February sales “exceeded expectations and beat all forecasts.” 

The Malta Developers Association said that the total combined value of promise of sale agreements concluded this February was €85 million, or 29 per cent, higher than that 12 months prior. 

Property sales registered in January and February this year “accounted for 17% of all sales for 2022,” the MDA said, with sales values €153 million higher than sales registered in January and February 2022.  

The lobby group did not provide a source for its statistics. 

Concerns of a slowdown in the local property market were sparked by official figures which showed a massive drop in property sales in December, and further stoked by a KPMG report which warned that a potential rise in interest rates would continue to make home loans less affordable for the average family. 

Those warnings appear to be coming to fruition, with HSBC having already raised its home loan interest rates and APS Bank warning that a future increase is “well possible”.

A rise in home loan interest rates will impact all homeowners with a variable-rate home loan, resulting in an increase in their monthly payments. 

But the MDA believes demand for local property will remain in the coming years, on the back of interest from property investors. 

“Malta will remain the best investment opportunity for those looking to invest in a stable and thriving market,” it said. 

House prices have been rising in line with the EU average.

It noted that an EU report published in December, the Housing in Europe Report 2022, found that Maltese property prices have been rising at a similar rate to the EU average and are among the most affordable across the EU, when compared to income. 

The report found that local housing is also more affordable than the EU average when factoring in water, electricity and heating costs, and that Malta has the lowest rate of home overcrowding across the EU.  

Rent prices are rising at a much faster rate than the EU average.

Counterwise, the report found that rental prices have been rising at a faster rate than the EU average over the past years and that Malta also has the highest rate of people living in an under-occupied home, meaning a property that is deemed too large for the household living in it.