thetenant.app

Malta letting rules, written for whoever is reading.

Everything here comes from the regulation, from something the MTA has published, or from a source we name on the page. Malta treats letting to a visitor and letting to somebody who lives here as two different things, under two different authorities. Pick whichever of the six below sounds like you.

Short lets

Short lets, licensed by the MTA under L.N. 92 of 2026. Somebody stays for a holiday and goes home.

For operators

You own a place and you want to let it out. This takes you from checking the property to renewing the licence, in the order it happens.

For property managers

You look after places that belong to somebody else. The 2026 rules name you directly, and one letter to the MTA decides whether you or the owner ends up paying.

For guests

You are booking somewhere to stay. Here is how to tell a licensed place from an unlicensed one before you pay, and what the price should already cover.

Long lets

Long lets, registered with the Housing Authority under Cap. 604. Somebody lives there.

For landlords

You are letting a place to somebody who will live in it. The contract has to be registered within thirty days and has to contain seven things, and it is void without either.

For tenants

You are renting a home in Malta. The law gives you more than most people know, including the right to register the lease yourself if your landlord has not.

For block administrators

You look after a block. Short lets in it have to tell you in writing, and the Condominium Act says how the building decides things.

Letting a place out happens in an order.

The licence sets that order and the guide for short-let owners walks it, in ten steps. Each page above shows you which of the four stages it belongs to.

  1. Stage 01Before you letFind out whether the place can be licensed at all, and whose name goes on the licence.
  2. Stage 02Getting licensedFit the place out, write the waste plan, and send the application in.
  3. Stage 03Running itThe things that come round with every guest and every night you let.
  4. Stage 04RenewingWhat you send in again when the licence comes up, and what your licence keeps.

Outside the order.

Some of this belongs to nobody in particular. The collection schedule is for anyone who puts a bag out, and the noise rules bind everybody whichever side of a wall they are on.

And four things to fill in rather than read.

All four are for a letting under Cap. 604, and each one names the article it works from.

Make the sign, free

Before you pick a side.

Which Maltese letting rules apply to me?
It turns on the person staying rather than on the property. A stay by somebody on holiday is a short let, licensed by the Malta Tourism Authority under L.N. 92 of 2026. A home somebody lives in is a private residential lease, registered with the Housing Authority under Cap. 604. Where a letting sits near the line, that is a question for a lawyer about your own arrangement.
Does an MTA licence mean the Private Residential Leases Act does not apply?
No. Article 3(2)(b) of Cap. 604 excludes tenements let to a tourist exclusively for tourism, and then says in terms that where a property is registered as holiday furnished premises the Act still applies if the occupant does not qualify as a tourist. So the licence does not settle it, and a long booking by somebody working here is exactly the case worth asking about.
Is any of this legal advice?
No. These pages are read out of the instruments themselves and each one names what it was read from and when. We are not the MTA or the Housing Authority, we license nobody and we certify nothing, and where a regulator has not published a position we say so rather than fill the gap.