What is measured

The index reports the median, 25th and 75th percentile asking price of residential listings first advertised on Darscover during a calendar quarter, broken down by locality, sub-locality, property type and bedroom count.

What is not measured, and why it matters here

Darscover holds no sold data and no deed values. Every figure is what a seller asked, not what a buyer paid. Asking prices sit systematically above achieved prices, and the gap widens when the market slows, so a fall in achieved prices can show up here late or not at all.

This is therefore not a house-price index in the sense the National Statistics Office publishes one, and it should not be compared directly with the NSO Property Price Index or with promise-of-sale values. Where the two disagree, they are measuring different things.

A quarter's cohort is the listings first advertised in that quarter, identified by an immutable created_at, so every historical figure stays reproducible. Sale listings remain on the market for months, so this measures what came to market in the quarter rather than everything available during it — a wider gap than on the letting side, where turnover is faster.

Sample and its limits

The sample is listings advertised on this portal, not the Maltese market. As of mid-2026 two agencies supply the large majority of Darscover inventory, so every published quarter carries its own source concentration figure and it should be read alongside any number taken from it.

For Q2 2026: 444 residential sale listings were first advertised, 437 are included, drawn from 2 advertising sources with the largest two supplying 100%. The national median was €480,000.

Exclusions

Cascading, in this order, so the counts sum to the cohort:

Listings flagged by moderation.
Duplicates — the same property advertised by several agencies is counted once.
Price-on-request listings, which carry no usable price.
Prices outside the plausibility bounds for the category (€25,000 to €15,000,000 for residential sales), which filter data-entry errors rather than unusual properties.

Suppression

Any bucket below 10 listings is suppressed rather than published. Expect more suppression here than in the rent index at the same floor: a quarter's sale cohort is smaller than its rental one, because sale stock turns over far more slowly. A median over a handful of asking prices is not a number worth quoting, and publishing one would do more damage than the gap does.

Quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year movements require both quarters to clear the floor; otherwise the movement is reported as unavailable rather than computed from thin data.

Baseline quarter

The first quarter of collection contains the initial backfill of stock advertised before Darscover began collecting. Its level is not comparable with later quarters and no movement is ever computed from it.

Using the data

Each quarterly release is downloadable as CSV and JSON (latest JSON), including per-bucket sample sizes so a reader can judge any figure for themselves. Free to use with attribution to the Darscover Malta Asking Price Index and a link to the quarter quoted.

Corrections, questions, or a cut that is not published: team@darscover.com.