Maisonettes in Malta

A maisonette occupies part of a building - usually the ground floor, or ground plus first floor - with its own street-level entrance, rather than being reached through a shared building lobby. That single feature is what separates it from an apartment of similar size. Maisonettes commonly come with a small back yard or garden, and NSO tracks them as their own distinct category in both the Census and the Residential Property Price Index. Per Census 2021, maisonettes make up around a fifth of Malta’s main residential dwellings.

Less shared infrastructure, more owner responsibility

Because a maisonette has its own entrance, it typically involves less shared building infrastructure than an apartment. Where a maisonette sits in a small block with units above it, the roof, airspace and any shared stairwell serving the upper floors still fall under the Condominium Act (Chapter 398)’s co-ownership regime, with a registered administrator required once the block has four or more owners. But the maisonette’s own yard, frontage and entrance are the owner’s sole responsibility - there’s no administrator handling their upkeep, unlike an apartment’s shared common parts. As with apartments, older maisonettes can still carry ground rent from when they were originally sold.

Spread across the islands rather than concentrated

Unlike apartments, which cluster heavily in high-rise coastal zones, maisonettes are more evenly spread across Malta and Gozo, and are proportionally more common in traditional village cores across the south and centre of Malta, and in Gozo’s lower-rise housing stock.

Buying and renting

A maisonette suits buyers who want more privacy and a private entrance without a full house’s price tag or maintenance burden - a common choice for families. The trade-off is that owners carry more responsibility for their own frontage and yard than an apartment owner relying on a shared administrator. For investors, maisonettes tend to suit long-let family tenants better than short-let tourist demand, except where a maisonette itself has character-property appeal in a location like Valletta or Mdina.