2022 property market overview

2022 was a year where Europe faced numerous challenges: the war in Ukraine, an energy crisis, tightening monetary policy, supply chain challenges, continuous spikes in general inflation, and fears of a global recession.

On a local level this has meant shortages in products, and a steep rise in the cost of living resulting in subsidies and a higher COLA for residents and citizens to keep up with growing costs. Against this backdrop, the EY-Djar report looks at the already volatile property market in Malta for 2022 to see how the surrounding factors affected the sector.

The volume of deeds remained stable in 2022 (14,305) compared to 2021 (14,368). While promise of sale agreements were substantially down in 2022 (12,177) compared to 2021 (15,639) due to the expiration of the COVID-19 stamp duty scheme, but up 8.2% on 2020. This upward trend continues to be observed in more recent statistics published for 2023.

Residential property listings

The Northern Harbour has the largest shares of residential listings (37%) and the highest share of apartments listings (43%), while the Western region has the last number of listings on the market. Previously, this used to be held by Gozo which currently has the lowest average asking price even though it experienced increases in all property types in relation to average €/sqm by property type.

On the other hand, the South-Eastern and Northern regions experienced decreases in relation to average €/sqm by property type, possibly pointing towards a gradual convergence in prices. The asking price per square metre for apartments has increased across all regions, while asking prices for townhouses in Gozo have declined.

Overall, asking prices remained relatively flat with any increases or decreases being within the +/- 1% range.

Rent

Median rents are higher in the Northern region, as has been in the past and largely in line with regional observations for sale price data. O

n the other hand, median rents tended to be lowest in Gozo for almost all property types.

In general, apartment yields vary somewhere between 4-5%. However, higher yields of around 7% are recorded in main property locations such as St. Julian’s, Sliema and Valletta, which appear to be recovering well post-COVID on the back of increased demand for apartments and tourist private accommodation rentals.

Commercial properties for sale

The highest asking prices per square metre are mostly found in the Northern Harbour, Northern and Western regions. Year-on-year average asking prices were up for hotels (6.9%), shops (1.5%) and storage facilities (11.7%), but down for catering (4%), offices (1.2%) and showrooms (0.2%).

In addition, there was a quarter-on-quarter increase in asking prices for all property types except hotels. The latter was down 9.1%.

Commercial properties for rent

Median rental asking prices per square metre are mostly highest in the Northern Harbour and Southern Harbour region across all the different property types.

Meanwhile in offices, the median asking price per square metre was approximately €215/square metre – with the highest figure observed in St Julian’s (€316) and the lowest in Naxxar (€101) – a clear discrepancy between highest and lowest points.