National Statistics Office (Malta)

Price Statistics Unit

National Statistics Office (NSO),

Lascaris, Valletta VLT 2000, Malta.

The OOHPI is based on the ‘net acquisitions’ approach, which measures changes in prices paid by households for the acquisition of dwellings that are new to the household sector and changes in other costs related to the ownership, and transfer of ownership, of dwellings.

The OOHPI is broken down into the following expenditure categories:

• O.1. Owner-occupiers’ housing expenditure;
  • O.1.1. Acquisitions of dwellings;
    • O.1.1.1. New dwellings;
      • O.1.1.1.1. Purchases of newly built dwellings;
      • O.1.1.1.2. Self-build dwellings and major renovations;
    • O.1.1.2. Existing dwellings new to households;
    • O.1.1.3. Other services related to the acquisition of dwellings;
  • O.1.2. Ownership of dwellings;
    • O.1.2.1. Major repairs and maintenance;
    • O.1.2.2. Insurance connected with dwellings;
    • O.1.2.3. Other services related to ownership of dwellings.

Households which are owner occupiers.

The main statistical variables are price indices.

The basic unit of statistical observation are transaction prices of dwellings new to the household sector and of other products that the households acquire in their role as owner-occupiers.

The target population is the set of all transactions of apartments, maisonettes and terraced houses new to the household sector and that are purchased for own use by private households, and those for which costs have been incurred in order to maintain for own use by private households.

Data are available for Malta and Gozo as a whole for total OOHPI. 

The time series of OOHPI Malta is starts from the first quarter of 2010.

2015=100

The following units are used:

- Index point;
- Percentage change on the same period of the previous year (rates);
- Percentage change on the previous period (rates);
- Percentage share of the total (weights).

OOHPI is a quarterly statistics.

The Malta Statistics Authority (MSA) Act empowers the NSO to collect, compile, extract and release official statistics related to demographic, social, environment, economic and general activities and conditions of Malta.

Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2023/1470 of 17 July 2023 lays down the methodological and technical specifications in accordance with Regulation (EU) 2016/792 of the European Parliament and of the Council as regards the house price index and the owner-occupied housing price index, and amending Commission Regulation (EU) 2020/1148 (OJ L 181, 18.7.2023, p. 1–15).

Regulation (EU) 2016/792 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 May 2016 on harmonised indices of consumer prices and the house price index, and repealing Council Regulation (EC) No 2494/95.

No data sharing arrangements are in place.

At National level:

The NSO requests information for the compilation of official statistics according to the articles of the MSA Act – Cap. 422 and the Data Protection Act – Cap. 586 of the Laws of Malta implementing the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR).

Article 40 of the MSA Act stipulates the restrictions on the use of information while Article 41 stipulates the prohibition of disclosure of information. Furthermore, Section IX of the Act (Offences and Penalties) lays down the measures to be taken in case of unlawful exercise of any officer of statistics regarding confidentiality of data.

Since its inception, the NSO has always assured that all data collected remains confidential and that it is used for statistical purposes only according to the articles and derogations stipulated in the laws quoted above.  The Office is obliged to protect the identification of data providers and refrain from divulging any data to third parties that might lead to the identification of persons or entities.

During 2009, the NSO has set up a Statistical Disclosure Committee to ensure that statistical confidentiality is observed, especially when requests for microdata are received.

Upon employment, all NSO employees are informed of the rules and duties pertaining to confidential information and its treatment. In line with stipulations of the MSA Act, before commencing work, every employee is required to take an oath of secrecy whose text is included in the same Act.

An internal policy on anonymisation and pseudo-anonymisation is in place to ascertain that adequate methods are used for the protection of data which the office collects and shares with the public in its capacity as the National Statistics Office.  The policy is meant to safeguard confidentiality of both personal and business data entrusted to the NSO.  The document provides guidance for all NSO employees who process data on a daily basis as to how anonymisation and pseudo-anonymisation methods should be applied.  The policy applies to all confidential, restricted and internal information, regardless of form (paper or electronic documents, applications and databases) that is received, processed, stored and disseminated by the NSO.

At European level:

Regulation (EC) No 223/2009 on European statistics (recital 24 and Article 20(4) of 11 March 2009 (OJ L 87, p. 164), stipulates the need to establish common principles and guidelines ensuring the confidentiality of data used for the production of European statistics and the access to those confidential data with due account for technical developments and the requirements of users in a democratic society.

Data are published in index format; hence confidentiality is preserved.  Indices reflect price movements. This is in line with the NSO’s Code of practice.

The OOHPI is not published on a national level.

Not relevant.

Not relevant.

Quarterly (OOHPI) and annually (weights)

Not available.

Not Applicable

OOHPI and OOHPI weights: Eurostat database.

A selected set of data indicators for Property Price Index are available on the NSO website through:

https://nso.gov.mt/prices/

Micro-data is not disseminated.

Not relevant.

Not available for OOHPI.

Quality reports on OOHPI are not available at the moment.

All data are checked for completeness and consistency with OOH statistical concepts and definitions, and with data obtained from the HPI and the HICP.

The quality of the OOHPI is routinely reviewed using a framework that is based on the OOH Manual and the European Statistical System (ESS) definition of quality. 

The OOHPI responds, on the one hand, to the needs of all individual users interested in the behaviour of the domestic house price market and, on the other, to the needs of the European Central Bank and Commission for a set of indicators monitoring the stability of the house price market. 

Not available.

There are problems to compile the indices at the 5-digit level and to distinguish between New and Existing dwellings. Some assumptions will have to be made in order to cover all relevant expenditure categories defined in the OOH regulation. For the compilation of data, consistency is ensured by following both guidelines and regulations. Furthermore, data completeness is ensured for any requests received by third parties.

The OOHPI is deemed to be accurate and to depict a realistic picture of the property market, even though it is subject to a potential bias emanating from the omission of important variables.  We are considering alternative sources to address the problem.

Not available.

Index numbers for the purchase of new dwellings are based on data obtained from an administrative source. It can be the case that there are inconsistencies (due to misclassification) in this data. The Prices Unit is putting its efforts in minimizing these errors. In case of the other OOHPI categories, human errors in coding and data entry are the two main types of non-sampling errors. Besides, the weighting scheme is normally based on different assumptions which might give rise to non-sampling errors.

Data are sent according to the OOH/HPI Regulation data transmission guidelines for quarterly indices. The OOHPI is not published on a national level.

Deadlines have always been met.

Data are comparable across NUTS II regions.  

Data are comparable over time.

Internal coherence is assessed by comparison of HPI and OOHPI sub-indices for acquisition of dwellings. External coherence cannot be tested.

The overall indices and their subdivisions are consistently calculated. To ensure internal consistency, the HPI and the OOHPI sub-indices for the acquisition of dwellings, are compared.

As data for the sub-index related to the HPI is obtained from an administrative source, there are no costs involved. In order to reduce the burden, data is provided by the source at the beginning of every month via email. Data consists of a register and as stipulated by the law, contract transactions must be registered with the tax department. Other costs involve the salary of the employee/s working on the compilation of the OOHPI indices and their respective sub-indices.

Requirements for revisions are set out in Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2023/1470. The published OOHPI data may be revised for inconsistencies, new or improved information, and changes in the system of harmonised rules. The data for the last four quarters are always flagged as provisional due to late contract registrations by the notaries.

The general public is informed about possible non-periodic revisions in the press releases. Data for the last four quarters is flagged as provisional due to late contract registrations by notaries. 

See below.

The readily available HPI for ‘purchases of newly build dwellings’ is used as a proxy for the OOHPI category ‘purchases of newly build dwellings’. The HICP is used as a proxy for all the other services associated with the acquisition and ownership of dwellings.

The main sources for OOHPI weights are National Accounts figures, Construction figures, and the property transaction prices obtained from the Capital Transfer Duty within the Inland Revenue Department. 

Data for the acquisition of new dwellings are provided by the source at the beginning of every month via email, whilst for all other services associated with the acquisition and ownership of dwellings, data are collected every month. Weights data is collected annually.

Administrative data for the acquisition of new dwellings are provided by the source at the beginning of every month via email, whilst for all other services associated with the acquisition and ownership of dwellings, data are collected every month at source. Weights data is collected annually via email from other units within the NSO.

Various procedures ensure that errors are minimised in the data. The following validation checks are made on each record in the source data:

• extreme values are identified and eliminated if thought necessary;
• data cleaning is done to remove cases of obviously erroneous data;
• minimum and maximum values are investigated and removed if believed to be suspect.

The aggregate output is compared with those from previous quarters.

See below.

See below.

OOHPI is a Laspeyres-type price index.

The indices in every sub-component of the OOHPI are aggregated according to their weights. Then the OOHPI sub-indices are aggregated using the weights obtained for the OOHPI as in 18.1.2.

Weights for each year are derived from previous year National Accounts figures, Construction figures, and the property transaction prices obtained from the Capital Transfer Duty within the Inland Revenue Department. These weights are revised every year to ensure that they are always relevant.

Elementary aggregate weights are adjusted with an appropriate price change between the year t-1 and the fourth quarter of the year t-1.

The OOHPI is chain-linked every year, using the fourth quarter of the previous year as the linking period. This enables the revision of weights on an annual basis, thus ensuring that the index is relevant at all times.

See below.

The price of the dwelling is the price in the final sale contract, i.e. after transfer of ownership of rights. The date of the final deed is used to allocate the transactions with the respective month/quarter.

VAT is not included in the price of newly built dwellings.

Other taxes are not included in the price of dwellings.

The HPI includes only transactions at market prices.

The price of land is included in both prices and weights.

Housing cooperatives are not covered in the OOHPI.

Non-market transactions are identified from the price variable. This is usually very low, or not available.

Not applicable.

Not applicable.

See below.

The Arithmetic Means are used in the compilation of the elementary aggregates. As all items at the lowest levels are weighted, in order to aggregate to higher level indices, the sum-products of the indices and the weights are calculated for each COICOP.

Missing prices are carried forward for three consecutive months. During these three months, interviewers collect the price of a similar product. The new price together with the specifications of this new product is stored in the system but it is not used for the compilation of the index. If the problem persists in the third month, the new replacement product is introduced. Sometimes this also requires quality adjustment.

When a replacement model differs significantly from the replaced model, an implicit method or explicit method of quality adjustment is used.  We use three different quality adjustment methods, namely the direct comparison method (comparing prices of the old and the new product over two periods without adjustment), the bridged overlap method (derives the price change between the old and new item from the observed price change of other items in the sub-index) and the hedonic method (regression analysis is used to assess the extent to which the observed variability in the price of a product can be explained by variability in the product's attributes).  

All changes are assessed on a case-by-case basis. The direct comparison method is used only when the change between the replacement and replaced models is not radical.

Missing prices are carried forward for three consecutive months. During these three months interviewers collect the price of a similar product. The new price together with the specifications of this new product is stored in the system but it is not used for the compilation of the index. If the problem persists in the third month, the new replacement product is introduced. Sometimes this also requires quality adjustment.

Sales prices and reduced prices are included in the index as long as they are universally available to all consumers.

Not applicable.

VAT is included in the observed prices.

No adjustment method is used, as current data does not contain such parameters.

No further comments.