How to buy property in Malta in 2026: konvenju, notary, final deed
Your offer on the Mosta apartment was accepted on a Tuesday. By Thursday the agent is talking about a reservation fee, a notary you have not met, and a twenty-one day clock. Finding the flat turned out to be the easy part. What follows is a payment schedule that nobody hands you a copy of.
Here is the sequence, one step at a time. You pay a reservation fee to take the property off the market. You sign the konvenju, the promise of sale, and put down a deposit that customarily runs to about 10% of the price. From there your notary has 21 days to give notice of that promise to the Commissioner for Revenue. A provisional duty payment follows too, 20% of the duty chargeable, though on a slightly later deadline of its own. Only at the final deed do the balance of the price, the rest of the duty and the notary's fee actually leave your account. Keep that in mind: two clocks are running in those first three weeks, and they are not the same clock.
The konvenju binds you, the kuntratt transfers the property
The konvenju is the promise of sale. Signing it commits both sides: you to buy, the seller to sell, at an agreed price and by an agreed date. The kuntratt, the final deed, is the moment ownership actually moves.
Everything useful happens in the gap between the two. The notary searches the title. The bank values the property and issues a sanction letter. A perit takes a proper look at the building, if you have any sense. None of that work counts for much if the promise itself was never validly notified, which is where most of the confusion starts.
There is no maximum length for a konvenju anywhere in the statute. Three months is the common arrangement, six months is normal on new build, and the term is whatever the two of you write into the contract. The deadline the law actually cares about is much shorter, and it has nothing to do with your deposit.
Two deadlines that keep getting collapsed into one
Almost every guide online merges these. They are separate rules with separate consequences, and it is worth keeping them apart in your head.
The first is the notice. Notice of the promise of sale has to reach the Commissioner for Revenue within 21 days of signing, under rule 10(2) of Subsidiary Legislation 364.06. If that notice is not given, the promise is not valid. That is the whole penalty, and it is a serious one, because an invalid promise is not a contract anyone can enforce.
The second is the money, and it works differently. Article 3(6) of Chapter 364 sets the provisional payment at 20% of the duty chargeable on the transfer, not 1% of the price. The 1% figure still circulates because, for years, it gave the same answer. When duty was a flat 5% with no exemptions in play, 20% of 5% came to 1%, and the shorthand quietly outlived the arithmetic behind it. Timing differs from the notice, too: this payment falls due 10 days from the Commissioner's approval or 21 days from the promise, whichever comes later. Either way, it is not cash you need to carry to the signing table.
One more point, because it frightens people unnecessarily. A missed notice does not forfeit your deposit by operation of law. What happens to money already paid depends on what your contract says. The statutory consequence is the validity of the promise, and nothing beyond it.
What the duty actually comes to
Standard duty is 5%. The old 2% Gozo concession is no longer available on a 2026 purchase, so a house in Xewkija is charged at the same 5% as a house in Mosta unless some other relief applies.
First-time buyers pay nothing on the first €200,000. Legal Notice 305 of 2025 made that permanent from 28 October 2025, with no expiry date attached this time. The cash you still need sitting in the account is a separate problem, and we work through it in our 2026 deposit guide.
There is a practical consequence worth spelling out. If the chargeable duty on your transfer works out at nil, then 20% of nil is also nil, and the provisional line at the konvenju is nil too. Ask your notary to compute the figure rather than budgeting 1% of the price out of habit and then wondering where it went.
The cash calendar
Only the duty lines below come from statute. The reservation, the 10% deposit and the notary's fee are market practice, which means they are negotiable and they vary.
| When | What leaves the account | Where the rule comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Offer accepted | Reservation fee, amount varies by agency | Custom. There is no statutory figure. |
| Signing the konvenju | Deposit, customarily around 10% of the price | Market practice, not a tariff. |
| Within 21 days of the promise | Notice of the konvenju to the Commissioner for Revenue | S.L. 364.06 r.10(2). Miss it and the promise is not valid. |
| 10 days from approval, or 21 days from the promise, whichever is later | Provisional duty of 20% of the duty chargeable | Cap. 364 Art. 3(6). Can be nil where chargeable duty is nil. |
| Final deed | Balance of the price, balance of the duty, the notary | Duty is statute. Notary fees of roughly 1% to 2% are market practice. |
For context on the wider market, the National Statistics Office put GDP growth for the second quarter of 2026 at 4.5% in volume terms, with domestic demand adding 5.3 percentage points and foreign trade taking away 0.7 (NSO, 27 August 2026). People are still transacting. What trips buyers up this year is the timing of cash rather than any shortage of stock.
Who does what, and who you pay
Four people touch this file before you get the keys, and each one shows up for a different reason. Start with the notary, because everything else waits on that appointment. The notary is the hinge the whole transaction turns on. In market practice the buyer chooses and pays that notary, which regularly surprises people who assume the cost is shared. Over the following weeks the notary drafts the konvenju, gives the 21-day notice, computes the provisional duty, runs the searches, and eventually publishes the final deed. If you want the longer version of that job, we set it out in our note on the legal aspects of buying or selling.
Before any of that starts, someone has to get the file moving, and that is the agent's actual job. The agent holds the reservation and makes the introductions. Agency commission is a seller cost in market practice, so none of it comes out of your deposit. The genuinely useful thing an agent does at this stage is unglamorous: getting your notary and your perit onto the same file early enough that the 21-day notice is not a Friday afternoon scramble. That is how we prefer to run a file at Zanzi Homes.
The perit sits outside Chapter 364 altogether, which is exactly why people skip the visit. Buyers commission a structural and permit check anyway, and on older stone that check is often the difference between a purchase and a renovation project nobody budgeted for.
Last, and easiest to underestimate: the bank runs on its own clock, separate from the notary's 21 days. Directive No. 16 from the Central Bank of Malta caps lending at 90% loan-to-value for Category I, a primary residence, and at 75% for Category II, a second home or a buy-to-let. Ninety per cent is a ceiling rather than an offer. The 2025 Financial Stability Report has first-time buyers borrowing at an average of around 80%, and banks generally apply the cap to the lower of the price and their own valuation. Find out which category you fall into before you make an offer, because it moves your deposit by fifteen percentage points.
What the notary is looking for in the searches
Go back to that first job on the list: "runs the searches" is doing a lot of work in three words, and it is worth knowing what it actually covers. Title first. Then hypothecs, pending court causes, and whether the property is freehold or still carries cens. A ground rent that nobody mentioned during viewings is the seller's problem right up until the deed, at which point it quietly becomes yours. Permits are a perit question, but the notary will still want an answer before publishing.
That is the honest reason a purchase runs to two or three months rather than two or three weeks.
The order to do things in
- Confirm with the bank whether you are Category I or Category II before you offer. Your deposit floor depends on the answer.
- Pay a reservation only as custom, and only once you know who the notary will be.
- Sign the konvenju with the customary deposit ready, understanding that the 10% is convention rather than law.
- Have the notary give notice within 21 days, and compute 20% of the duty chargeable for the later payment date.
- Keep the sanction letter aligned with the deed date. Bank funds arrive for the kuntratt, not for the reservation.
Once the cash lines are clear, the enjoyable part comes back. Live stock is on property for sale in Malta.
Frequently asked questions
What happens if a konvenju is not registered within 21 days?
The promise is not valid. That is the consequence set by S.L. 364.06 r.10(2), and it is the only one the statute imposes. Whether money already paid comes back is a question for your contract, not for the Act. The duty payment runs on its own, slightly later, deadline.
How much provisional stamp duty is paid on a konvenju?
Twenty per cent of the duty chargeable, under Cap. 364 Art. 3(6), rather than 1% of the price. Where the chargeable duty is nil, the provisional payment can be nil as well. It falls due 10 days from the Commissioner's approval or 21 days from the promise, whichever is later.
Do banks in Malta lend 100% of the property value?
No. Directive No. 16 caps Category I at 90% loan-to-value, so 10% in cash is the regulatory floor on a primary home, and Category II is capped at 75%. In practice first-time buyers were borrowing at an average of about 80% according to the 2025 Financial Stability Report, and banks tend to lend against the lower of the price and the valuation.
Who pays the estate agency commission?
The seller does, out of the deed proceeds, as a matter of market practice. The customary figures are around 5% on a multi-agency mandate and around 3.5% on a sole mandate, with 18% VAT on the fee itself. None of those percentages is a government tariff.
How long does it take from konvenju to final deed?
There is no statutory duration at all. Two to three months from accepted offer to deed is the common experience, and the konvenju term is whatever the contract says. The only hard deadline in the opening weeks is the 21-day notice.
What does the notary have to do when you buy property in Malta?
Give notice of the promise, compute the provisional duty, search the title and publish the final deed. The buyer usually appoints and pays that notary. The searches, along with any cens or permit questions, are why the file takes weeks rather than days.
This article is general information and not legal, tax or lending advice. Have a Maltese notary compute the duty and the dates on your specific file before you make an offer.