Malta Property Buying Costs 2026: Duty & Fees

Budget roughly 6-8% of the purchase price in taxes and fees when buying property in Malta: 5% duty on documents, 1-3% in notary fees, plus searches, an architect valuation and bank charges. First-time buyers pay no duty on the first €200,000, which drops the total to nearer 3-4%.

The good news is that Malta is cheap to buy in by European standards and there is no annual property tax at all once you own. The complication is that almost every relief has an expiry date attached and gets renewed, amended or quietly killed at budget time each October, so a figure from a 2024 article is not a figure you can budget from.

Cost	Who pays	Typical amount on a €300,000 purchase
Duty on documents (standard)	Buyer	€15,000 (1% at konvenju, 4% at deed)
Notary fee	Buyer	€3,000-9,000 (1-3%)
Searches and registration	Buyer	Under €100
Bank-appointed architect valuation	Buyer	Around €300
Bank legal and booking fees	Buyer	Around €300
AIP permit, if required	Buyer	€233
Estate agency commission	Seller	5% + 18% VAT
VAT on the property itself	Nobody	Exempt

Duty on documents, and the two payments

What everyone calls stamp duty is formally duty on documents and transfers, and the headline rate on residential property is 5% of the value of the acquisition. It is not paid in one go.

1% is provisional duty, paid when your notary registers the promise of sale, which has to happen within 21 days of signing. The remaining 4% falls due on the final deed and is payable within fifteen days of it. Your notary collects and remits both, so the practical effect is that you need the 1% in cash at konvenju stage, on top of the 10% deposit.

Duty is charged on the value of the property, not on what you agreed to pay for it. If the declared price looks low against the market the authority can and does assess it upwards. This is not a corner to cut.

There is no VAT on the transaction. The sale of immovable property in Malta is exempt without credit for VAT purposes, so you pay 18% on the professional services around the deal (agency commission, some fees, any building work) but nothing on the property.

The reliefs, and whether you qualify

First-time buyers pay no duty on the first €200,000. This is the big one, worth up to €7,000 against the standard rate and up to €10,000 against the reduced band. Budget 2026 made it permanent through Legal Notice 305 of 2025, effective for transfers from 28 October 2025, replacing the annual renewals that used to make people rush their purchases into December.

The eligibility test is stricter than most expats assume. You must never have owned or inherited residential immovable property, and that means anywhere in the world, not just in Malta. If you owned a flat in Lyon in your twenties and sold it, you are not a first-time buyer here. The property also has to be your sole residence. What changed in Budget 2026 is that previously owning non-residential property, a garage or a field, no longer disqualifies you.

Separately, first-time buyers get a grant of €10,000 paid over ten years towards home loan repayments, now also a permanent scheme rather than an annual announcement, and the Deposit Assistance Scheme covering properties up to €250,000 helps buyers who cannot raise the 10% themselves.

The 3.5% band is the relief that applies when you are not a first-time buyer but you are buying a home to live in. Duty on the first €200,000 drops from 5% to 3.5%, with the balance at 5%. It comes with a condition that catches foreign buyers: it is available only where the acquisition does not require an AIP permit. Needing the permit therefore costs you the relief as well as the €233.

Second-time buyers who sell their home and replace it within twelve months can claim a refund of duty on the first €86,000, provided the property being replaced was owned and occupied for at least three years. This one still carries an expiry date of 31 December 2026.

Urban Conservation Areas and old or vacant property carry the most generous relief on the books. Buy a property in a UCA, or one built more than twenty years ago and vacant for more than seven, or a new build in traditional Maltese style, and both duty and the seller's property transfer tax are exempt on the first €750,000. First-time buyers of qualifying property also collect a grant of €15,000 in Malta or €40,000 in Gozo, and there is a VAT refund of up to €54,000 on the first €300,000 spent on restoration works. Per KPMG's summary of the extended schemes, this relief runs to 31 December 2026, with the notice deadline falling at the end of January 2027.

That last one is worth taking seriously rather than skimming. A village-core townhouse in Birgu or Żebbuġ that needs work can end up costing less in tax than a new-build apartment at half the price, and it is the only part of the Maltese system that rewards buying the interesting stock rather than the convenient stock. It is also, by design, time-limited: if you are counting on it, check its status before you commit, because these schemes have been extended annually for years and one year they will not be.

Gozo: the 2% rate is gone

Half the internet still says Gozo carries a reduced 2% duty rate. It does not. The scheme, introduced in the 2017 budget and extended annually after that, was abolished in Budget 2024, with a short transitional window for promises of sale already signed. Gozo purchases now pay the same 5% as everywhere else.

What Gozo did keep is the enhanced €40,000 first-time buyer grant on conservation-area and long-vacant property, against €15,000 in Malta, plus lower property thresholds under the residence programmes. The economics of buying there are still good, mostly because prices per square metre are roughly half those of the north harbour, and the living in Gozo guide covers what that life actually looks like. Just do not build a budget on a duty discount that expired two years ago.

The professional fees

Notary fees run about 1-3% of the price, split roughly a third at the promise of sale and the rest at the deed. That fee buys the title searches, the hypothec checks, the planning verification and the drafting, which is the work that stops you buying somebody else's legal problem. It is the one line on this page where paying at the top of the range is defensible.

Estate agency commission is 5% plus 18% VAT and the seller pays it. Sole agency agreements are sometimes negotiated lower, around 3.5%. As a buyer this costs you nothing directly, though it is worth remembering that it is priced into the asking figure and that the agent's duty runs to the person paying them.

The architect. If you borrow, the bank appoints a perit to value the property, typically around €300. That is a valuation for the lender, not a survey for you. Your own structural inspection is extra and worth it on anything old, converted or cracked.

Bank charges are modest and add up anyway: HSBC Malta's published home loan terms list a €200 legal fee, a €100 booking fee and about €42 to update searches. Add mandatory life assurance covering the full loan and buildings insurance, both conditions of the mortgage rather than optional extras, and priced on your age.

Three worked examples

A €300,000 apartment, three buyers, three very different bills.

First-time buyer, EU citizen resident in Malta, buying a home. No duty on the first €200,000, 5% on the remaining €100,000, so €5,000 in duty. Notary at 1.5% is €4,500. Architect, bank fees and searches add roughly €700. Total around €10,200, about 3.4% of the price, and the €10,000 grant over ten years claws most of it back.

EU resident who already owns property abroad, buying a home here. No first-time relief, but the sole-residence band applies: 3.5% on the first €200,000 and 5% on the rest, giving €12,000 in duty. Same €4,500 notary and €700 of extras. Total around €17,200, about 5.7%.

Non-EU buyer needing an AIP permit. Flat 5% duty with no reduced band, so €15,000, plus the €233 permit. Same professional fees. Total around €20,400, about 6.8%, and the property cannot be let. Buying inside a Special Designated Area removes the permit and the letting ban but not the duty, and typically costs more per square metre.

What you owe after you own it

Very little, which is the genuinely unusual part of the Maltese system. There is no annual property tax, no council tax and no wealth tax. The recurring costs of owning are your building insurance, any service charge if you are in a managed development, and any ground rent if the property is held under emphyteusis rather than freehold, which is common enough that you should treat it as a question to ask rather than an exception to expect. The buying guide explains why the temporary version of that arrangement is the most expensive thing in Maltese conveyancing to get wrong.

On death, Malta has no inheritance tax, but that phrase is doing more work than it should. Heirs pay duty on Maltese immovable property passing causa mortis. Where the property was the deceased's ordinary residence and is occupied by the heirs, the first €35,000 is exempt and 3.5% applies on value up to €400,000, a threshold Budget 2026 doubled from €200,000. Other immovable property is charged at 5%. Foreign assets fall outside Maltese duty entirely, and the wider picture is in the personal tax guide.

And when you sell, the state takes its second bite: a final withholding tax of 8% of the sale price in the standard case, not of the gain, with an exemption if the property was your sole ordinary residence for at least three consecutive years and you sell within twelve months of moving out. That rule, and the narrower 5% and 2% cases, is covered in the full buying guide.

The number to budget

For a straightforward purchase with no reliefs, 6-8% on top of the price is the figure to hold in your head, and it is closer to 3-4% if you are a genuine first-time buyer. Compared with France, Belgium or Spain that is cheap, and the absence of any annual charge afterwards makes the long-run cost of ownership cheaper still.

Where Malta gets expensive is on the way out, because the 8% is levied on the whole sale price rather than the profit. Buy something you will live in for years, check whether the conservation-area relief applies before you dismiss the older stock, and get the rent versus buy comparison straight before committing, because at Maltese prices the crossover point is further out than the agent will tell you.