Okay folks, I am an apartment purchasing neophyte. In Canada, we bought a house. Some of our friends have bought condominiums, which usually come with lots and lots of hidden fees. We are both career focussed people relatively useless with a hammer, so this time around we are thinking about buying an apartment in a building, but my question is, what sort of maintenance fees are likely? I haven't seen any mentioned on the real estate sites, but someone has got to fix the roof, right?
On that note, in purchasing a property, what sort of fees do we need to budget for in the purchase/sale? I'm assuming we will have:
- real estate fees
- legal fees (notary) - I noticed someone mentioned negotiating a fixed price was best - how much should we budget?
do we need a
- home inspection?
- title search?
- monthly condo fees?
If we are borrowing, are downpayments normal? I can't find anything about downpayments on HSBC malta, but we typically spend 5-25% in downpayment in canada....
We are considering spending between 100 000 - 150 000 euros on a property, to give you an idea of what sort of property we're looking for. Any advice on purchasing (as a non EU, yeesh) would be much appreciated. I'm just trying to build a financial picture of life in malta for us, before I agree to the numbers suggested in the contract.
Thanks in advance, this board has been super helpful so far and I'm looking forward to meeting you all when we hit the ground (could be as early as January, if all goes well)
Buying an apartment?
Hi Sarafima,
I waited for the weekend property pages before replying, you can also check out private properties on the timesofmalta.com /classified yourself.
You can expect to pay 5 % sales tax , 1-1,5 % fees for public notary (title search/sales contract aso)and anything from 1 % up as commission if you buy through an agent.
As far as I know there are no yearly property taxes or rates here in Malta.You just pay your water and electricity.
The Maltese national sport is finding loopholes in laws and agreements so you should make sure that you arrange a fixed rate for every service you need and lay out the details very precisly.
Buying for 100.000 € is really the absolute lowest you can expect and would get you a small apartment somewhere well away from the main areas. If you look around long enough you can probably find a place somewhere above 150.000 €.Check out the newspaper for examples.
'shell' building means you are buying basically just walls and a roof on top.All the rest still needs to be invested!
Downpayment is typically 20 % or more of which 10% must be payed when signing the contract.
Considering all said above it only seems interesting to buy if you really are thinking of staying in Malta for years and check out the posts about being Non-EU in Malta. There might be some problems lurking there !
Regards
Ricky
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