People searching for property in Malta occasionally search for property on Comino too, drawn by the Blue Lagoon’s postcard reputation. The short answer is: there is effectively no private residential market on Comino, and there almost certainly won’t be one - it works fundamentally differently from the rest of Malta’s property market.
Who actually owns Comino
Comino falls administratively under the Għajnsielem local council on Gozo, but the island itself is almost entirely government-owned. It has a resident population that has been reported at as low as two to four people in recent years, down from a peak of around 80 in the late 1940s - there simply is no meaningful residential community or housing stock to buy into. The one significant exception to government ownership is a long lease granted in the early 1960s to a private developer for the site of Comino’s hotel and bungalows, running for 150 years at a nominal ground rent - a single large leasehold concession, not a general property market.
The hotel site and its current legal battle
The former Comino Hotel has been closed since 2022. Its site is now the subject of an approved but legally contested redevelopment: Hili Ventures, through its subsidiary HV Hospitality, has Planning Authority approval to rebuild it as a 140-bed luxury resort and expand its bungalows from 13 to 16 at Santa Marija Bay, branded as the “Six Senses Comino Project.” Environmental NGOs have continued to challenge the permit through the Planning Revision Tribunal and the courts, centred on the loss of protected garigue habitat within Comino’s Natura 2000-designated area, and as of 2026 the legal process was still unresolved. Whatever the outcome, this remains a single commercial hospitality development on leased government land - not new private residential property coming to market.
Why this matters for buyers
If you’re specifically drawn to the Comino lifestyle, the realistic options are staying there as a visitor or booking whatever hospitality product eventually operates on the hotel site, rather than owning property there. Buyers wanting a genuinely quiet, low-density, boat-access lifestyle with an actual functioning property market should look instead at Gozo’s smaller coastal and rural villages - see Sannat or Qala for a similar sense of remove without Comino’s near-total absence of private ownership.