A Malta lease needs an inventory even when the flat is empty

A signed inventory is one of the seven things the Private Residential Leases Act says a residential lease must contain, and a lease missing any of the seven is null and void. The wording asks for photographs with short descriptions, and it says the inventory is needed for an unfurnished letting too.

Article 6(1) of the Private Residential Leases Act says a residential lease has to be in writing and lists seven things it must contain. The seventh is the inventory, and the wording is longer than most people expect.

Then a proviso says the inventory may be presented as photographs on their own, as long as they show the condition of the place and of the landlord's furniture and appliances fully, clearly and unequivocally. And then a second proviso, which is the one that catches people:

What a missing inventory does to the lease

Article 6(2) says an agreement missing any of the seven essential requirements is null and void. The same sub-article says that failing to meet them does not release the landlord from registering the lease, so a landlord cannot get out of the registration duty by writing a defective contract.

Signed by everybody

Not a list the landlord wrote and handed over. Documentary evidence signed by all parties.

Photographs with words on them

Each photograph is accompanied by a short description of what it shows. A folder of unlabelled images is not what the article asks for.

Empty properties too

The letting most landlords assume is exempt is the one the second proviso names explicitly.

Where that leaves the sheet we give away

Our inventory and condition report opens with the parties, takes the electricity and water readings on the day, and counts the contents line by line. When this was first written it had nowhere to put photographs, which is the part the article names in terms, so we added one on 10 August 2026.

A sheet cannot hold the images, so it holds the reference. Number each photograph, on the print or in the file name, write the same number on the sheet with a short description of what it shows, and the room and the date beside it. The block sits directly above the signature block, so the photographs and their descriptions are signed with everything else rather than attached to it afterwards.

What a landlord owes on a residential letting is on the landlord's guide, and the same rules from the other side are on the tenant's guide. Which of the two Maltese regimes covers a particular letting turns on whether the occupant qualifies as a tourist, and that is a question for a lawyer rather than for us.