Housing - Record 10,409 permits issued
A record 10,409 housing units were approved by the Malta Environment and Planning Authority in 2006. This means that a total of 45,956 housing units were added to the stock in Malta between 2000 and 2006. Of these, 76 per cent are apartments.And the...
A record 10,409 housing units were approved by the Malta Environment and Planning Authority in 2006. This means that a total of 45,956 housing units were added to the stock in Malta between 2000 and 2006. Of these, 76 per cent are apartments.
And the construction explosion does not seem to be slowing down. Six mega projects currently in the pipeline are expected to add over 3,300 apartments. However, while 45,956 units were built, only 24,852 new water connections were installed by Water Services Corporation (See graph). And if you assume that some of these will have been installed in finished units that have not yet been sold, the real demand appears to be well under half the supply.
A report in The Times warned last January that Malta could end up with a glut of unsold apartments by the end of the year. One agent reported that he had 2,000 apartments on his books - in Sliema alone.
The law of supply and demand dictates that this surplus will result in lower prices, in spite of the perennial argument that prices must go up in Malta because land resources are finite.
The law of economics is winning. House prices have slowed their steep rise, especially for terraced houses, according to the Quarterly Review issued by the Central Bank.
It said that house price inflation decelerated sharply during the September quarter. Advertised residential property prices rose by an annual 2 per cent, down from 7.8 per cent in the previous quarter and from 7.6 per cent in the same quarter in the same period last year.
This slowdown in house price inflation reflects the fact that asking prices for finished flats (40 per cent of the sampled properties) did not change. There were also more moderate price increases for other types of property, especially terraced houses for which asking prices went up by just 1.7 per cent compared to a year earlier. In the September quarter of 2005 the prices had risen by 24.9 per cent.
The advertised prices for houses of character went down by 4.4 per cent. Shell properties fared somewhat better. The asking price for maisonettes rose by 3.1 per cent after having declined for the previous two quarters, while that for flats increased by 12.5 per cent on a year-on-year-basis, faster than the June quarter and than a year ago.
And the construction explosion does not seem to be slowing down. Six mega projects currently in the pipeline are expected to add over 3,300 apartments. However, while 45,956 units were built, only 24,852 new water connections were installed by Water Services Corporation (See graph). And if you assume that some of these will have been installed in finished units that have not yet been sold, the real demand appears to be well under half the supply.
A report in The Times warned last January that Malta could end up with a glut of unsold apartments by the end of the year. One agent reported that he had 2,000 apartments on his books - in Sliema alone.
The law of supply and demand dictates that this surplus will result in lower prices, in spite of the perennial argument that prices must go up in Malta because land resources are finite.
The law of economics is winning. House prices have slowed their steep rise, especially for terraced houses, according to the Quarterly Review issued by the Central Bank.
It said that house price inflation decelerated sharply during the September quarter. Advertised residential property prices rose by an annual 2 per cent, down from 7.8 per cent in the previous quarter and from 7.6 per cent in the same quarter in the same period last year.
This slowdown in house price inflation reflects the fact that asking prices for finished flats (40 per cent of the sampled properties) did not change. There were also more moderate price increases for other types of property, especially terraced houses for which asking prices went up by just 1.7 per cent compared to a year earlier. In the September quarter of 2005 the prices had risen by 24.9 per cent.
The advertised prices for houses of character went down by 4.4 per cent. Shell properties fared somewhat better. The asking price for maisonettes rose by 3.1 per cent after having declined for the previous two quarters, while that for flats increased by 12.5 per cent on a year-on-year-basis, faster than the June quarter and than a year ago.