The face of Malta's property market is changing.

Historically the market has always been characterised by a very high rate of home ownership levels - meaning that the rental market was, in effect, quite a small part of the grander scenario.

That, however, has changed over the last few years.

In a press conference earlier this week, Housing Minister Roderick Galdes shared that in the last five years, rented accommodation has shot up from around 27,000 at the end of 2020 to over 71,000 at the start of October 2025.  This is an increase of over double, and in tandem with it rental subsidies were noted to have increased seven times over the last seven years.

Data from the National Statistics Office meanwhile also shows a trend: home ownership rates are dropping while the share of households that are living in their home on a rental basis is increasing - and the change is happening fast.

In 2023, 72.1% of households owned the home they were living in. That is down to 66.4% in 2024.  Pretty much in tandem, 24% of households were renting the home they were living in during 2023 - and that was up to 29.7% in 2024.

The share of homeowning households with no money owed for their property also stood at 48.1 per cent in 2024, the data showed - a historic low, indicating that the majority of people are need bank loans in order to purchase their property.

This is a property market that is uncharted territory in Malta's history.

The government has already been forced to act to address the new realities that emerged from a growing rental market: realities such as overcrowding in dwellings, abuse from landlords, abuse from tenants, rampantly increasing rental prices, and a host of others.

The reforms made have, on the whole, been positive: caps on the number of people living in dwellings has addressed realities where there were up to even 16 people piled into one apartment, while a legal obligation to register a rental contract with the Housing Authority and a cap on how much a rental contract can increase by in a year also helped to reduce abuse and to tackle people being priced out of the market from one year to the next.

There are still steps forward to be made: tenants still find themselves in situations where they must deal with abusive landlords, but landlords also continue to find themselves in situations where they must deal with abusive tenants.

This means that there is still work to be done.

The most ideal thing however would be for more incentives for people to become home owners. There are already plenty of good initiatives in this regard, and the government's work to increase the stock of affordable accommodation is also commendable.

However, the fact is that - as said by a report penned by Grant Thornton and Dhalia earlier this year - property prices are increasing at an obscene rate. The study found that what would have cost €150,000 in 2013 now commands €337,500, while rental prices have surged by 71% over the same period.