Malta Real Estate Funds

A collective investment scheme licensed as a PIF or an AIF may invest in immovable property.

PROFESSIONAL INVESTOR FUNDS (PIFS)

Any PIF having 10% or more of its assets consisting of real estate investments or investing in property management or property financing companies are likely to fall within the MFSA Property Funds Policy.

The Property Funds Policy serves to set out the parameters within which certain investment funds may invest in real estate / immovable property. It is to be noted that the policy was originally developed for funds licensed as Professional Investor Funds (“PIFs”).

The MFSA’s policy in respect of real estate funds can be outlined as follows:

Funds whose main objective is investing in real estate and targeting investors who are not Malta residents:

Unrestricted borrowing for liquidity purposes for PIFs targeted at Qualifying Investors (minimum investment threshold of 100,000 per investor).
Open ended PIFs are allowed to be leveraged up to a maximum of 50 % of NAV.
Closed-ended PIFs do not have any leverage restrictions but

Funds which have only a limited exposure of direct or indirect investment in real estate and who target investors who are Malta residents and/or non-Malta Residents

The exposure to real estate (direct or indirect) should be limited to approximately 10%-20% of the fund’s NAV which restriction is to be disclosed in the fund’s Offering Memorandum.
The fund’s percentage direct or indirect investment in real estate, is subject to half-yearly reporting to MFSA to ensure that the property exposure limit is satisfied on an on-going basis.
No further investment restrictions other than those standard restrictions applicable to PIFs targeted at Experienced Investors shall apply.

ALTERNATIVE INVESTMENT FUND (AIFS)

AIF may invest directly or indirectly in immovable property. In this case, the AIF would be subject to the following supplementary conditions:

the AIF may invest up to a maximum of 25% of its total assets directly or indirectly (through an SPV) in any one single immovable property. Subject to the AIF being operated according to the risk spreading principle, it will not be required to comply with this restriction before three years from its launch. For the purposes of this restriction, a property whose economic viability is linked to another property is not considered as a separate item of property for this purpose.
the AIF should be exposed to not less than 5 different properties if it invests solely in immovable property (rather than also in property funds and/ or other securities);
the AIF may invest 100% of its total assets in any single property fund ;
the AIF may invest up to 100% of its assets in a SPV provided that the applicable investment, borrowing and leverage restrictions are satisfied at the level of the SPV.

For further information about how GVZH Advocates can help you with your investment services query, kindly contact us on finance@gvzh.mt.