Developers say official statistics showing that more than 80,000 houses are vacant are misleading and that a deeper dive shows that the property sector is thriving.

The Malta Developers Association said the fact that a quarter (81,613) of dwellings are grouped together as secondary, seasonally used or vacant "tends to give a negative perspective when in fact a deeper dive shows a positive picture of the property industry."

The National Statistics Office (NSO) is currently unable to separate between these three types of dwelling categories since the status of these dwellings could not always be determined during the fieldwork, the MDA pointed out.

The NSO said that "this situation is common in any Census, as the status of secondary, seasonally used or vacant dwellings is typically assigned based on information provided by neighbours or the condition of the dwellings themselves. Sometimes this can be highly subjective." 

The MDA said for this reason it was more reliable to draw on the property market experience encountered by its members and the general public.

It was becoming a well-known fact, for example, that renting or buying an existing property was becoming increasingly difficult, so the idea of a quarter of dwellings, referenced above, being mostly vacant ‘does not hold’, the lobby pointed out.

On the other hand, the property market was the investment of choice of Maltese families, which over the past years, opted to invest in second homes either for themselves (the predominance of such dwellings in Gozo confirms this) or to rent out to third parties, the MDA added.

This has become a standard additional source of revenue for many families.

“Vacant property is definitely less of a factor today than before, and in most cases, it is directly related to long-winded Court disputes related to inheritance,” the MDA pointed out.

Further proving the resilience and good health of the property market was the fact that primary residences increased at a higher rate (41.2%) compared to secondary, seasonally used, or vacant dwellings (14.8%), the MDA said.

“This confirms that each generation of Maltese chooses to buy its residence and sees it as an investment,” it underlined.

The MDA highlighted it was also obvious that the profile of the Maltese family and the affordability of housing has an impact on the type of dwellings being developed.

Now apartments are the most popular (48.4%), followed by maisonettes (23.9%), and terraced houses (22.7%).

The National Statistics Office reports that the overall condition of dwellings was predominantly good, which also disproves the idea of abandoned places, the MDA said.