It may be difficult to find ways and means to keep all rooms in your property in Malta cool during a typically hot summer of Malta – when temperatures soar.  Most properties in Malta suffer the heat terribly and keeping a home fresh in peak summer can be exceptionally hard. Keeping out the sun may be an easier thing to do than trying to keep the house fresh by spending a great deal of money to run air conditioning systems around the clock.

There are several ways of blocking the sun and its heat. Here are some ideas:

Changing patterns – the patterns (more…)

So you need to find some office space to rent in Malta? The local papers and Malta real estate websites will probably find you several options to consider, but there are a number of things you must think of before committing yourself to renting office space.

Location – think of all aspects on the issue of location. How far is the office from your home? Will you and your team need to travel a long distance to get there every day? Is the location ideal for your clients? Is the location ideal for your business’ or professions’ reputation? Is it as central as you need it to be? Is it too central, or too isolated?



If you are in doubt, travel to and from the aspired-for office at different times of the day and on different days of the week so that you will gauge all these elements. (more…)

Not every room within a property in Malta comes blessed with abundant natural light. Practically every piece of real estate in Malta has one – that light-eluding space that causes you to switch on the light bulbs even in broad daylight. This article is not about choosing lighting for a dim room but rather on how to lighten up the room naturally during the day before it gets dark. There are a number of practical and sometimes simple measures which can be adopted to make a world of difference to your dim spaces. You may be able to make some of the more radical changes suggested or perhaps adopt a few of the ideas that are less complicated to fulfil. Read on….

First things first – your dim room/space hopefully has a window. Check out the size of the window in comparison to the rest of the room. If the window looks out onto a narrow shaft, check to see if there is enough space to get the window slightly enlarged to allow more light to stream in. An architect or builder may be able to tell you if this enlargement is possible and safe to accomplish. If you do opt for a larger window, be sure to choose a window frame tha (more…)

The economy today is different to that from a few years ago. As it continues to change, our budgets also change. Taking out an insurance to cover the contents of your household may seem to be an extra payment we think we can do without, but we shouldn’t kid ourselves – home insurance should never be considered optional.

The average household continues to see bills rising, a trend that is showing no sign of slowing. Gas and electricity tariffs are also on the increase. A household’s fuel bill has increased by a good percentage over the past few years while food prices continue to spiral. On top of all these increases, a home insurance (more…)

It’s normal to be excited when buying real estate in Malta as this is not something you do every day. One may very well get carried away and purchase a property and realise later that they have overlooked the fact that the property had latent damages or hidden defects not visible to the layman’s eye, which could, a year down the line, turn your life completely upside down.

What you thought might have been a house you’d like to settle in for a substantial number of years turns out to be a property you may want to get rid of just after a few years. And what’s the cause for such a decision?

On purchasing a property, many – especially if they are first time buyers in Malta - fail to anticipate certain little defects that may turn out (more…)

In this day and age, many will agree that owning a property in Malta is the best investment.  It’s not always easy to take that giant leap to sell your first home and purchase another in order to improve on what you have.

The first thing highly likely to come to one’s mind is shooting up the price and increasing the property’s value in order to “save” having to take out another loan on top of an existing one.

It definitely doesn’t work that way. In fact, by doing so, you will find that you will be losing out big time in the long run. And I could safely state this from an experience I’ve lived myself.

Imagine this. You price your malta property at €100,000 but in actual fact your property is worth much less according to current market evaluations. You list your property with a string of malta real estate agents and every now and again you may get a knock at your door or a call to have your property viewed. (more…)

The range of first time buyers in Malta is much wider than I had first thought it out to be. It comprises couples who have decided to set up a family, and are seeking a place where to live, right down to the regular long established families who feel that the time has come to make the leap from renting a place to owning a property. 

However Ms Jane Caruana, who has just acquired her very first property in Malta, and has kindly agreed to talk to me about her experiences, comes from yet another category. This is how she explained her reasons for her first ever home purchase.

“I had been saving money for a number of working years. I am now 30 years of age, and I feel it is the right time to move out of my parents’ house and invest in a property of my own,” she told me, adding, perhaps in order to make her message clearer, “You may say it was the result of a combination involving a lifestyle necessity, coupled with the need to make some kind of solid investment.”

I then asked Jane whether she had any preferences regarding Read rest of the story

So you’ve been thinking of buying a property in Malta? And you’re kind of eyeing the local papers and making a note of all the properties with a Sale notice attached to their front window? Whilst you can traipse around and do it solo, there is a lot to be said for getting an Malta real estate agent on board to help you in the hunt. First things first – get a seriousagency and make sure you feel you can communicate with the agent assigned to you.

The agency fee is paid by the seller so the buyer incurs no costs. However you should never take advantage of the estate agent for the simple reason that you may end up the loser if you go it alone or ignore precious advice.

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I would not say that there very many people currently eyeing real estate in Malta, or who are in the process of relocating to Malta, who bother about the island’s gastronomic history and contemporary culinary delights and I dont think that the reputable real estate agent in Malta that you may be using would think of telling you much about it.  Not saying that he or she couldn’t be your perfect conceirge.  The Maltese cuisine is a part of the culture you may be considering considering to relocate to so we felt this article may be of interest. (more…)

Some of the most exhilarating rooms are especially important visually because they are decorated around a central theme. The theme becomes the characteristic by which this room is identified and may become the be-all and end-all of the room’s very existence.

But it takes some talent to actually know where the characteristic turns into becoming overwhelming and when to stop rubbing it in. Take colour. Some people decide their living room is going to be centred around red. So they go…. red settee, red curtains, red statement wall, red figurines, red painting – all you see is red. Typically this will be your red room, but the theme has now turned into exaggeration and seeing red (more…)

No it’s not a feature about weddings. If you follow the latest in interior trends, you will realise that mixing the old with the new is what the current inclination is all about. Grandma’s old table is actually something to vie for as it may add that certain ‘wow’ factor to your room. But how daring can one be when it comes to mixing old and new furniture and furnishings in any given room? I meet up with interior designer Vera Sant Fournier to ask her advice….

“Placing two distinctly different styles in the same ambience is all about creating a very delicate balance so that no piece is fighting for attention and no style must feel like it wants to dominate the scenario. You must plan ahead very carefully and decide whether it s (more…)

Two is two’s company….. three’s a crowd. They also say that once you have three of the same, you can already start boasting a collection. It might be three books by the same author, just as likely as three still life paintings. When you’re doing up your home, you have to take into consideration your collections, whether they are still in their initial phases of growth or whether they are fully-fledged collections that make other collectors drool from their eyes.

 What constitutes a collection?   (more…)

‘You sure have it all,’ my friend told me, adding, ‘when God was handing out the gifts He was certainly lavish with your island.’

The middle aged successful ex-banker had just relocated from Munich to ‘my’ Malta and we were having dinner to (more…)

From impressions garnered via bits and pieces in the press and other street talk, I thought that the malta property business had stalled, having joined the looming casualties of this dreaded global recession. I certainly thought that I was not alone in assuming that prices are plummeting, people are posting back their keys through their lenders’ doors and real estate agencies are on the wane.

However, after talking to Mr James Busuttil, Franchise owner and branch manager at RE/MAX Central, whose office is in Triq Dun Karm, Birkirkara, I stand to be corrected. This gentleman of 20-years-plus standing in the industry, doesn’t allow you to stray too much outside the peripheries of what his Office is meant to achieve. And contrary to what I was given to understand regarding the (more…)

So you have just bought a new apartment in Malta and whilst it’s got the right number of bedrooms and bathrooms, it does not actually boast of grand open-air space. In fact that small back terrace seems rather cramped, bare and miserable. You’re luckier than your neighbour, next floor up, whose only open-air access is a minimalist balcony, just one-foot deep. So you feel blessed in that respect. (more…)