The problem
Every deposit dispute starts the same way
A tenancy ends. The landlord walks through the flat and sees a stained sofa, a scratched worktop, an oven nobody cleaned. The tenant remembers the stain being there on day one and the worktop already scratched. Both are sincere. Neither has a dated photograph, a signed list, or anything a third party would accept as evidence.
Malta has a good route for settling this. The Housing Authority Adjudicating Panel is cheap, quick and does not need a lawyer, and since Act XX of 2024 every lease is supposed to include a signed, photographed inventory. But the inventory is almost always written by one side, or not written at all, and the panel is left to decide between two memories.
Talk to any letting agent in Malta and they will tell you how much of their time goes on exactly this argument.
How the UK solved it
Independent inventories are simply how lettings work there
In the United Kingdom, an independent inventory clerk attending at check-in and check-out has been normal practice for decades. Landlords and agents book one the way they book a cleaner. The clerk acts for neither side, the report is signed by both, and when a deposit is disputed the adjudicator reads that report first.
The effect is measurable. One national provider issues over 75,000 reports a year, and fewer than one in a thousand ever reaches formal adjudication. Most disputes never start, because the evidence is already on the table before anyone has to argue.
That is where we come from. Our background is in UK lettings and property inspections, and we spent years watching a signed, photographed report quietly end conversations that would otherwise have gone on for weeks.
Why here, why now
Malta needs this, and nobody was doing it
When we started looking at the Malta rental market we expected to find a local version of the UK model. There was none. Tens of thousands of new tenancies are registered every year, deposit disputes are a constant topic among landlords, tenants and agents, and the law now asks for exactly the document we know how to produce. The gap was obvious.
So we built PropertyCheck Malta to do one thing well: attend, record what is there, and issue a report that neither side wrote. Fixed prices, booked online, issued within 24 hours, covering all of Malta and Gozo.
It is a new category for Malta. We think it will feel obvious within a few years, the way it does in the UK now.