Malta's Property Price Index Rose 6.7% in 2026: What It Means for the AIP Permit and Non-Resident Buyers

Every summer, a short legal notice from Malta's National Statistics Office lands in the Government Gazette. It runs to one page, it contains a table of numbers, and it moves the minimum property value at which the Minister must grant a non-resident's permit to buy a home outside a special designated area.

This year's notice is Legal Notice 202 of 2026, published on 17 July. It sets the immovable property price index at 287.89 on 1 April 2026, an increase of 6.7% on 2025. That figure feeds directly into the Acquisition of Immovable Property permit, the AIP permit that many foreign buyers need before they can sign a final deed in Malta.

The 2025 buyers' guide explains the AIP permit in outline. What follows goes one level deeper, into the legal texts themselves: what the index does, which minimum values the law actually contains, who counts as a non-resident, and why special designated areas sit outside the system altogether.

What the July notice says

The notice is made "for the purposes of article 6(1)(b)" of the Immovable Property (Acquisition by Non-Residents) Act, Chapter 246 of the Laws of Malta, and "in respect of article 2" of the Value of Immovables Order of 1999. The Director General of the NSO establishes the index; the notice says the 2026 figures are provisional and that its table supersedes figures in earlier notices.

The index uses 2004 as its base year (2004 = 100). The table in the notice runs from 2011 to 2026:

Read the series end to end and the direction is plain. The index has more than doubled since 2011 (from 141.30 to 287.89) and has risen every year since. The only fall in the table is 2011. Since 2022 the annual change has stayed between 5.9% and 7.3%.

This is a different series from the quarterly Residential Property Price Index that the NSO publishes for the market as a whole, which is covered in the piece on 2026 NSO property figures. The July legal notice exists for one legal purpose: adjusting the minimum value in the non-residents' law.

What the index adjusts

The mechanism starts in article 6(1) of Cap. 246. The Minister responsible for finance may grant a non-resident a permit to buy a specific property. In one set of cases the Minister shall not withhold it: where the application is properly made and, for an individual who is not a resident of Malta, the property is a building "the value of which is not less than eighteen thousand and five hundred euro (18,500)", a sum the Act says "shall be adjusted in line with an immovable property price index that shall be published annually in the Gazette by the National Statistics Office".

That €18,500 is the floor written into the Act. The working values sit in subsidiary legislation. The Value of Immovables Order (S.L. 246.04, originally Legal Notice 98 of 1999) establishes the value "in relation to which the Minister shall not withhold his permission" at:

• €70,000 for an apartment, and
• €117,000 for any other property.

The Order defines an apartment narrowly: a one-storey residence, however called, in a vertical block of at least two residential units lying one above the other on a common site. A townhouse, a villa or a farmhouse falls under "any other property" and therefore under the higher value; whether a maisonette counts as an apartment depends on whether it fits that definition.

Two more details in the Act matter for the arithmetic. First, "building" includes a plot of land, and for the purposes of article 6 it includes the projected cost of its development. A buyer of a plot is measured against the value of the finished project, not just the land. Second, the Order still refers to "article 5(1)" of the Act. That is older numbering; the same rule now sits in article 6(1)(b), which is the article the 2026 notice cites.

Can you compute this year's minimum from the law?

This is where honesty matters more than a tidy number. The legal texts set out three things: the Act's €18,500 floor, the Order's €70,000 and €117,000, and the duty to adjust "in line with" an index published every year. The July notice supplies that index.

What none of the published texts states is the euro amount that applies after adjustment. Neither the 2026 notice nor its predecessor, Legal Notice 174 of 2024, prints a threshold in euro. The Order does not say which year's index its 1999 values correspond to, and the index table starts in 2011 on a 2004 base. A reader cannot rebuild the current minimum from the legal texts alone without assuming a base point the law does not give.

What can be said with confidence is the size of this year's step. If the minimum moves in line with the index, as the Act requires, it moves up by 6.7% for 2026, the same rate as in 2024, after 5.9% in 2025. A property that cleared last year's minimum by a narrow margin may no longer clear this year's.

The permit itself is granted by the Minister responsible for finance. Before you sign a promise of sale on a property close to the line, get the current figure confirmed in writing for your category (apartment or other property) and build the 6.7% step into your search. Do not rely on a figure quoted from an older brochure or an earlier year.

Who needs an AIP permit at all

The minimum value only matters if you need a permit. Cap. 246 decides that through its definitions, and the answer is wider than "non-EU buyers".

A non-resident person under article 2 includes:

• any individual who is not a citizen of Malta or another EU Member State, except third-country nationals holding long-term resident status under the Immigration Act;
• a citizen of Malta or another Member State who has not been resident in Malta for a continuous five years at any time before the acquisition;
• companies and other entities formed or registered outside Malta and the EU, or with their registered address or main place of business outside, or 25% or more owned by a non-resident, or controlled directly or indirectly by non-residents;
• trustees, where the trustee is a non-resident (unless all beneficiaries are determined residents of Malta) or any beneficiary is a non-resident.

A resident of Malta, by contrast, is a Maltese or EU citizen with five continuous years of residence, the spouse of a Maltese or EU citizen when both acquire together on the same deed, and a third-country national with long-term resident status. Residents buy without a permit. The "continuous period" ignores absences that total less than ninety days in a calendar year.

For EU citizens who have not yet reached five years, article 3 narrows the requirement. They need a permit only to buy for secondary residence purposes. A home that will be their primary residence, or property needed for their business or the services they supply, falls outside that definition.

Two consequences follow. A long-term resident from outside the EU is treated like a resident for this law, which is one more practical reason to look at the realistic routes to permanent residence. And structures matter: a Maltese company with a 25% non-resident shareholder, or a trust with a single non-resident beneficiary, is caught. Anyone holding Maltese property through a trust should read the definition alongside the 2026 trust register changes.

What the permit lets you do, and what it does not

A permit under article 6(1)(b) is for a residence for the buyer and his family, and only where the buyer does not already own other immovable property in Malta (apart from property acquired under the exemptions in articles 4(2) and 5). The Act adds two companion cases: a garage within five hundred metres of a residence already acquired, and an adjoining plot or building that will be integrated with it. The Minister may refuse a permit for property of historical importance or in a historical locality, and the application form asks the buyer to say whether the property is one.

The Second Schedule to the Act lists the conditions attached to every permit for a dwelling house:

• the property is used solely as a residence by the applicant and his family, and for no other purpose;
• the purchase is completed within six months of the permit, unless an extension is granted;
• a certified copy of the deed reaches the office of the Commissioner for Revenue within three months of publication of the deed;
• the property is not sold in part or converted into more than one dwelling.

For a plot, the buyer must finish one complete single residence within two years of the permit. Article 7 makes any other use without written ministerial consent an offence, with a fine of up to €23,000 or double the market value of the property, whichever is higher, plus daily fines for continuing offences. There is a 180-day window to put things right before proceedings can start.

The fee is modest. The Second Schedule states €232 per permit; the separate Fees Regulations (S.L. 246.01) state €232.94, payable on the date the permit is issued and not refundable.

Article 9 closes the obvious workaround. Buying shares in a company that owns property, in order to avoid the permit, is treated as acquiring the property itself. And article 6(5) requires the Minister to publish a list of permits granted every quarter in the Gazette, with such details of the person and property as the Minister considers appropriate.

Special designated areas: no permit, no minimum

Article 5(1)(b) of the Act states that the prohibition on non-resident acquisitions does not apply to the acquisition of immovable property "by any person, wherever resident, in a special designated area". No permit means no minimum value, no index and none of the Second Schedule conditions on use.

The areas are listed in the First Schedule to the Act. As consolidated on 16 January 2026, the schedule lists 27 zones, from Fort Chambray on Gozo and Portomaso to the most recent addition, Eden Place in St Julian's, added by Legal Notice 7 of 2026. The list has grown well beyond the sixteen zones counted in the earlier buyers' guide, so check the current schedule rather than any printed list.

New zones are not handed out casually. Under the Designation of Special Areas Regulations (S.L. 246.02), a developer must show at least 10,000 square metres of land, high-quality development, an architectural standard in harmony with its surroundings, planning permits, a legitimate source of funds, and that existing zones cannot meet demand. Designation costs a one-time fee of €23,000 plus €2.33 per square metre above 10,000. Smaller extensions next to an existing zone can be added under regulation 3 of the same regulations.

Freedom from the permit does not mean freedom from everything else. Other laws, from duty on documents to planning, still apply. What the special designated area removes is the Cap. 246 gate: the minimum, the one-property rule and the residence-only condition.

What this means if you are buying in 2026

Put together, the July notice changes one number and leaves the structure untouched.

First, check whether you are a non-resident at all. An EU citizen buying a primary home, or a long-term resident from outside the EU, may not need a permit. A company or trust with a foreign owner or beneficiary probably does.

Second, place the property in the right category. An apartment in the narrow legal sense carries the lower value; a house carries the higher one. For a plot, the projected development cost counts.

Third, confirm the current minimum, not last year's. The index rose 6.7%. If the property is close to the line, get the applicable figure confirmed before you sign.

Fourth, decide whether a special designated area fits. If you want to buy more than one property, or to use it for something other than your own home, the AIP route will not work, and the special designated areas are the zones where the Act's prohibition does not apply. The trade-offs between areas are set out in the guide on where to live in Malta.

The next index is due in the Gazette next summer. In the 2026 table it has risen in every year since 2012.

Work with Sebastian

If you are a non-resident weighing a Maltese property purchase and want to know whether you need an AIP permit, which category your property falls into, and whether a special designated area makes more sense, book a consultation.