Malta’s ballooning property prices a long way off steepest increases in EU

The price of Maltese real estate has been making headlines over the last years, as the steep increases seen year after year make home ownership an ever more distant dream for those on average wages, especially if they were hoping to buy property alone.

A new report from Eurostat however finds that Malta is nowhere close to the countries that have seen the largest property price increases since 2010.

The report, which looked at property prices across the European Union, puts the increase in the cost of Maltese real estate between 2010 and the first quarter of 2024 at 78 per cent.

It is not immediately clear why this figure is notably smaller than the approximately 100 per cent increase over the same period reported by other studies.

Whatever the precise rate, it is a far cry from the house price increases witnessed in Estonia (+223 per cent) and Hungary (+207 per cent). In both those countries, average property prices have more than tripled since 2010.

Also registering very impressive growth were property prices in Lithuania (+170 per cent), Latvia (+140 per cent) and Czechia (+125 per cent).

Austria (+108 per cent) and Luxembourg (+101 per cent) rounded out the seven countries which saw real estate more than double in price since 2010.

The average increase across the EU stood at 49 per cent. The only decreases were registered in Cyprus (-1.2 per cent) and Italy (-eight per cent).