What You Own in Malta — and What You're Allowed to Change

Two questions decide more about a Maltese property purchase than almost anything on the listing. What do you actually own? And what are you allowed to change? Neither is answered by the photographs, the asking price, or the agent's description — and a surprising number of buyers reach the final deed without having asked either one properly.

They are also questions for two different professionals. The first belongs to your notary, who reads the title. The second belongs to your perit, who reads the building and its planning record. This chapter takes both, using answers from Notary Dr. Michael Laferla and Perit Matthew James Mercieca from MJM|DA.

Part one: what you actually own

Freehold, or subject to ground rent

The first fork is simple to state and easy to skip. A freehold property is one where, as Dr. Laferla puts it, no dues are owed to third parties — you own it outright, with no recurring obligation running to anyone else. A property subject to ground rent carries exactly that kind of obligation.

What most buyers do not realise is that ground rent is not one thing. It is two, and the difference between them is the single most consequential fact in this chapter.

A perpetual ground rent runs indefinitely, and can generally be redeemed — the burden bought out, converting the property to full ownership. A temporary ground rent behaves entirely differently: when its period lapses, the property reverts to the original owner. The right you are buying is time-limited. It does not stay with you, and it does not pass to your heirs. If a property is subject to ground rent, which of the two kinds applies — and how much of the period is left to run — is not a detail. It is the thing you are buying.

How much of it you own

The second ownership question is how the property is divided. Where several people buy together they become co-owners, holding the property in equal shares or in different shares between them, as recorded on the deed. A share can also be bought on its own: Dr. Laferla confirms you can buy an undivided share, while noting it is not a common way to buy in Malta.

All of this sits in the title, which means it surfaces through the searches your notary carries out and forms part of whether you are getting good title. You do not have to establish it yourself — but you do have to ask, because nothing in a property advertisement is obliged to tell you.

And what you can do while you wait

Between the promise of sale and the final deed, months can pass. Dr. Laferla points to a right buyers often do not know they have: before the final deed you can inspect the property again, to confirm it is in the same state as when you agreed to buy it. It is a comparison, not a fresh survey — but it is the moment to notice that something has changed.

Part two: what you are allowed to change

What actually needs permission

Most buyers arrive with plans. Knock through here, add a floor there, turn the garage into a studio. The question of what that requires is where Perit Mercieca picks up.

Permission is generally needed where the work changes the use of spaces, increases floor area beyond a certain limit, adds units, introduces different class uses such as retail or commercial into a home, or alters the façade. Notice what he does not do: name a threshold figure. That is deliberate. Thresholds sit in planning policy and policy moves, so the principle is what travels — there is a limit, and you need to know where it falls for your property.

Plenty of work needs nothing at all. A refurbishment that does not change whether a space is habitable — one that does not, for instance, close off the natural light to a habitable room — can normally proceed without a permit. Houses of character are the exception. Authentic heritage features are not the owner's to remove, because heritage protection runs on its own track: under the Cultural Heritage Act, properties of outstanding cultural heritage value can be recommended to the Planning Authority for scheduling, adding a layer of protection above ordinary planning control.

Permit, application, sanction — three different things

The vocabulary trips people up, and the distinction turns out to matter enormously if you are buying a property where work has already been done.

A development application is the preparation and submission of a proposal for work still to happen. The permit is what you hold once that process ends. But where the changes have already occurred without permission, you do not apply for regular permission at all — you apply to sanction what was carried out. Different application, different question, and — crucially — not a guaranteed outcome.

One aside worth carrying if you are the one applying: Matthew's answer on why applications drag is not about the authority's clock. Treat the application as ticking a box, without properly designing the building and how it will be used, and you invite far more questions and a longer process. Design first, then apply.

Part three: the check nobody does for you

Read the planning history before you bid

Here is where the two experts meet, and it is the most useful thing in this chapter. From the legal side, Dr. Laferla is explicit that it is not the notary who checks a property's permits — the notary handles title. So if nobody in the legal process is checking the building against its permissions, who is?

You are. Through your perit. And this is how.

In most cases the Planning Authority's online portal holds the digitised files, including the latest planning permission. Older records run back into the PAPB — the Planning Area Permits Board, which handled permits before the Planning Authority was created in 1992 — and may need a file search to retrieve. What you are doing with them is a comparison: matching the property in front of you against the permission attached to it. Where they do not match, you have found the thing that the missing-permits problem is made of.

Why it lands on the price

It would be easy to file all this under paperwork. Matthew's closing point is that it is not — it is money, and someone else will enforce it even if you decide not to.

Formal valuation procedures tied to the banks rely on the legality of a development, so rooms that do not match the permit affect what a property is worth. Irregularities fall into two camps: those easily rectifiable and sanctionable under planning policy, and those that are not — and the second kind can greatly reduce a property's value. His example is a bedroom without windows, and he has seen it many times.

The sting is in who is protected. Go through a bank and the valuation applies that test for you; a situation like that will not be accepted, which is one of the routes to a bank refusing a home loan. Buy in cash and nobody applies it. You have removed the friction and the safeguard together.

What to actually ask

Four questions, and none of them takes long:

• Is it freehold, or subject to ground rent? If ground rent — temporary or perpetual, and how much of the period is left?
• How is ownership divided? Whole property, or a share — and if a share, whose are the others?
• What does the planning history show? Does the property as built match the permission on file?
• If something does not match, is it sanctionable? That answer is the difference between a fixable irregularity and a permanent discount.

The first two are questions for your notary. The last two are for your perit. Ask them before you commit, not after — and see the step-by-step guide to buying property in Malta for where each of these falls in the wider process.