Photo Inventory Rules in Malta: What Your Lease Must Show

The inventory is the last item on the list of things a Maltese lease must contain, and it is the one both sides treat as paperwork. It is not. It decides who pays for the scratched worktop, the stained mattress and the chipped tile when the lease ends.

The sharpest rule about it is not in the rental law at all. It sits in the Civil Code, it is one sentence long, and it says that where no description of the property was made, the tenant is presumed to have received it in good condition. No inventory means the tenant starts the argument already losing it.

What Article 6(1)(g) actually asks for

Article 6(1) of the Private Residential Leases Act (Cap. 604) lists seven requisites every written lease must contain. The seventh, since Act XX of 2024 amended it, reads: an inventory, in the form of documentary evidence signed by all parties, attesting the condition of the tenement as well as the state of any furniture and domestic appliances supplied by the lessor, and the parties shall accompany such photographs with short descriptions of the content of the said photographs.

Two provisos follow, and they are where the real obligations are. The first allows the inventory to be presented in the form of photographs, but only as long as the photographs are capable of attesting, fully, clearly and unequivocally, the condition of the tenement as well as the state of any furniture and domestic appliances supplied by the landlord. The second is one line and closes the loophole everyone used to rely on: the inventory shall also be presented in the case where the tenement is let unfurnished.

So the standard is not "take a few photos". It is signed by all parties, captioned, and complete enough that a stranger reading it later can tell what state the place was in. An unfurnished flat still needs one, because the walls, floors, sanitary ware and fixed appliances are exactly what a deposit argument is usually about. The full list of the seven requisites is in what a rental contract in Malta must contain.

Without one, the law assumes the place was fine

This is the consequence almost no template mentions. Article 1559 of the Civil Code (Cap. 16) says that where the landlord and tenant have made a description of the condition of the thing let, the tenant is bound to restore it in the same condition in which he received it, according to that description, except for what has perished or deteriorated through age or irresistible force.

Article 1560 covers the other case: where no description of the condition of the thing let has been made, it shall, in the absence of any proof to the contrary, be presumed that the tenant received the thing in good condition. The presumption is rebuttable, but the burden of rebutting it falls on the tenant, and a year after moving in there is usually nothing left to rebut it with.

Two neighbouring articles decide the rest. Article 1561 makes the tenant liable for any deterioration or damage occurring during their enjoyment of the property unless they prove it happened without their fault, and Article 1563 extends that liability to damage caused by their family, guests, servants and sub-tenants. Article 1557 is the limit on all of it: the tenant is in no case responsible for damage caused by force majeure without their own fault.

Miss it and the contract is null and void

Article 6(2) does not treat the inventory as a nice-to-have. In the absence of one or more of the essential requisites in sub-article (1), the agreement shall be null and void. A proviso added in 2024 then stops the landlord from benefiting from their own omission: failing to comply with any of those requisites may not be held as a valid reason for the landlord to be exempted from the obligation to register the agreement under Article 4.

In other words, a lease with no inventory is not registrable, and a lease that is not registered is unenforceable by the landlord - while the landlord still owes every duty and penalty attached to registering it. What that costs in practice is set out in what happens if a lease is not registered in Malta.

What the Housing Authority asks for at registration

The requirement is not theoretical: it is enforced at the counter. The Housing Authority's registration guidance lists the inventory among the mandatory contents of the contract, attesting the condition of the premises as well as the state of any furniture and domestic appliances supplied by the landlord, and states that this is mandatory for contracts with commencement dates from 1 January 2020 onwards.

In the portal itself, the inventory is an upload, not a tick box. At the Tenancy Details step you upload both the signed contract and the inventory; the property step separately requires the Lessor Self-Declaration. The submission then goes through a vetting process that may take up to ten working days, and applications with shortcomings land in a "Require Feedback" queue for the landlord to correct rather than being quietly accepted.

The model contracts published as subsidiary legislation say the same thing in contract language. Annex A shall include an inventory containing all the movables present in the premises, and the list shall include photographs of the state in which any of the movables have been delivered to the tenant. The condition clause then has the tenant acknowledge having examined the premises and declare that there are no apparent defects on either the immovable or the movables except those marked in the inventory. That sentence is the whole point: what is not marked is deemed not to be a defect.

How to take one that survives a dispute

The legal standard - fully, clearly and unequivocally - is easier to meet than it sounds, but it does rule out a phone album with no captions.

• Photograph every room, including empty ones. Walls, floors, ceilings, window frames, doors, sanitary ware, kitchen units and worktops.
• Photograph existing damage deliberately and close up. A wide shot of a room does not attest to a chip in the bath.
• Caption each photo with what it shows and where it is. The law asks for short descriptions, not essays: "bedroom 2, scuff to the left of the window" is enough.
• Include every appliance the landlord supplies, with make and model where it is visible, plus a shot of it working.
• Record the water and electricity meter readings on the handover day in the same document. They are not part of the inventory requirement, but they settle a different argument later.
• Sign it - both sides - and date it. Article 6(1)(g) says signed by all parties, and an unsigned set of photos is what the tenant will later be told was taken after they moved out.
• Keep your own copy. The version filed with the Housing Authority is not something either party can pull back down at will.

Do the same walk-through on the way out, against the original document. Article 1559 measures the tenant against the description that was made, so a move-out set that mirrors the move-in set is what turns a deposit conversation into a two-minute comparison.

The one lease that does not need it

There is a single carve-out, and it is narrow. Article 5 covers leases entered into after 1 June 1995 but before Cap. 604 came into force, which were still running on 1 January 2021 and had to be registered by then. Article 5(4) says that registering one of those does not require the declaration of the deposit under Article 6(1)(f) or the presentation of an inventory under Article 6(1)(g).

That exemption is about the transitional registration of old tenancies. Every lease signed since the Act came into force needs the inventory, whatever its length, and whether or not it comes furnished.

When the deposit argument starts

Cap. 604 does not itemise what counts as fair wear and tear, and there is no cap on the security deposit or a government escrow scheme holding it - see how much deposit a landlord can ask for in Malta. The inventory is therefore not one piece of evidence among several. It is close to the only one.

If it does go to a hearing, the Adjudicating Panel for private residential leases has exclusive jurisdiction over disputes about retaining or reimbursing a security deposit, for monetary claims up to 5,000 euros. One proviso in Article 23 is worth reading twice: the Panel shall only hear claims relative to registered agreements. A lease that failed on its inventory was never registrable, so it never gets near the fast route.

The rule in short

• Article 6(1)(g) requires an inventory signed by all parties, attesting the condition of the property and of any furniture and appliances the landlord supplies.
• Photographs are allowed as the form of the inventory if they attest the condition fully, clearly and unequivocally, and they must carry short descriptions.
• An unfurnished let needs an inventory too - the second proviso is explicit.
• Missing it makes the whole agreement null and void, and does not excuse the landlord from registering.
• The signed contract and the inventory are both uploaded at registration; vetting can take up to ten working days.
• With no description of the property, Civil Code Article 1560 presumes the tenant received it in good condition.
• The only exemption is Article 5(4), for the transitional registration of pre-2021 leases.