Data, regulation and digital transformation: Data-driven growth at the Housing Authority

Matthew Zerafa and Brian Micallef

Malta's private rental market has transformed remarkably, fueled by digital innovation and a surge in foreign tenants. Matthew Zerafa, chief executive officer and Brian Micallef, executive head responsible for digitalisation, legal and communications, explain how the Housing Authority's efforts—ranging from rent registers to dashboards—are setting new standards for transparency, streamlining processes, and shaping policies through data-driven insights.

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The landscape of Malta's private rental market has experienced profound shifts over the past decade, driven by the strong influx of foreign workers who rely on this sector for their accommodation. Before 2020, however, anyone interested in analysing this sector in Malta would have encountered a significant stumbling block—the absence of official statistics. No meaningful assessment is possible if the most basic information, like the number of active rental contracts, the characteristics of rental properties, and rental prices, is unavailable. 

The introduction of the Private Residential Leases Act in 2020 was a game changer. In addition to the introduction of much-needed basic standards in the sector, it led to the establishment of a rent register—an online platform where registrations are recorded on the private blockchain of the Housing Authority, one of the first of its kind in the public sector—that is updated in real-time, yielding an invaluable source of information. As of June 2024, the number of active contracts in this register rose to around 65,000, with 17 localities surpassing 1,000 contracts.

Since then, the Authority has continued to upgrade its data management infrastructure and has embarked on a much-needed digitalisation journey. In 2024, we have started the arduous task of scanning to convert physical documents—sometimes going back decades—into digital format in a centralised repository. The first scheme to be digitised was the Housing Benefit Scheme (HBS), which provides rent relief to around 2,900 low-income households. We also took this opportunity to simplify this process to make it less bureaucratic.

As part of this digital transformation, we have established a cross-departmental team to focus on data governance. This allowed us to construct internal dashboards that are updated daily, giving senior management real-time access to a wealth of information. These dashboards span the different areas of the Authority, including our schemes for homeownership and rent relief, assistance to pre-1995 tenants, social housing applications, compliance, our stock of housing, and the requests for maintenance and repairs.

"The Housing Authority's rent calculator now provides real-time benchmarks, offering tenants and landlords unparalleled clarity."

Unlocking the value of this data puts us in a better position to identify gaps, anticipate future needs, and improve our existing services. Our recent experiences in the rental sector, of which the Authority is the regulator, best illustrate this.

The shifting composition of foreign workers, with an increasing share of TCNs, led to significant changes in sharing arrangements. The situation had changed drastically compared to a few years earlier, when back in 2016, around 70% of these workers were EU nationals. In response to these new realities, the Housing Authority spearheaded a comprehensive review of the existing legal framework, with the regulatory amendments becoming effective on 1 September 2024. Among the main changes, the revised regulations provide better support for shared living arrangements to limit overcrowding issues, thereby addressing health, safety and well-being concerns for the tenants and those residing within the same neighbourhood.

In parallel, the Housing Authority is collaborating with other public sector entities responsible, such as migration and law enforcement, to give them secure access to its online platform. Once in place, these entities can access this information in real time for their decision-making.

This data allowed the Housing Authority to become one of the leading institutions on the island for housing research. Over the past twelve months, we have published several studies, including on compliance in the rental market and a survey with landlords and tenants on their experiences in the sector. Earlier this year, we complemented these studies with a dashboard, which makes this information easily accessible to everyone from our website.

A key feature of this dashboard is a 'rent calculator' that shows the average and median rent by property type, size, and locality (or region) from contracts registered with the Housing Authority. At present, the information refers to new contracts registered in the first half of 2024. For instance, the median rent for a two-bedroom apartment stood at €1,300 in Sliema, €1,100 in Gzira, €950 in Birkirkara and €800 in St Paul's Bay. While we acknowledge that rents for similar-sized properties can differ even within the same locality, sometimes from one street to another, we believe that this platform provides the best available benchmark for market rents and serves as a helpful guide for price comparison purposes.

The dashboard also plots other key rental market information, such as the most popular localities for rents, the number of active contracts, the growth rate in registered leases, and statistics on rental dwellings, such as their type and size. 

Thanks to this initiative, we have made significant strides in improving the data available on housing for policy analysis and research. This is also a testament to the Authority's commitment to fostering price transparency in the private rental market, providing transparency commonly found in other European countries.

This dashboard represents one building block in our digital transformation strategy, which we hope to continue refining and enhancing in the future. We trust that such a platform will interest other stakeholders, in addition to tenants and landlords (and the associations representing them). It shows the long way we've come in this sector and highlights our commitment to relying on a data-driven approach to make evidence-based decisions.   

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