Property in Maldives

Not freehold. The Maldivian constitution prohibits foreign ownership of land, and the 2015 amendment that created a narrow freehold exception was repealed with effect from 23 April 2019. Foreign buyers acquire a long leasehold instead: the state grants a head lease to the resort developer (typically 50 years, extendable to a maximum of 99), and the buyer takes a registered strata sub-lease of an individual villa beneath it.

Under the Maldives Tourism Act (Law No. 2/99) and the Regulation on Long Term Strata Leasing of Villas or Rooms (Regulation No. 2023/R-154, in force 5 September 2023). The strata lease must be registered with the Ministry of Tourism, which issues a Strata Title Registry entry. The lease is tied to the unit and cannot be separated from it, and the unit cannot be further sub-leased. No Maldivian company is legally required — a foreign national can contract directly.

There is no stamp duty (the Revenue Stamp Act was repealed) and no annual property tax on a strata villa owner — the recurring land charge is tourism land rent paid by the resort as head lessee, which reaches owners indirectly through the service charge. Strata registration costs MVR 5,000. The GST/TGST treatment of the purchase price itself is genuinely unsettled and project-specific, so obtain written Maldivian tax advice before signing.

There is no separate capital-gains tax regime. The old 15% land sales tax was repealed on 1 January 2020 and gains are now taxed under the Income Tax Act; a 10% capital-gains withholding tax can apply to non-residents. The widely repeated "10% property transfer tax" is a garbled reference to that withholding tax and does not exist as a transfer duty.

No. Ownership of a strata villa confers no residence right whatsoever. The government signed a partnership with Henley & Partners in July 2025 to develop a residence-by-investment programme, and a launch has been targeted since April 2026, but as of now it is not open for applications and no threshold has been officially published. Treat any advertised figure as unconfirmed.

The Maldives is the Indian Ocean's benchmark rate market: resorts traded at roughly 67% occupancy, US$558 average daily rate and US$360 RevPAR across 2025, against US$221 RevPAR in Mauritius and US$58 in Sri Lanka. However, no Maldives developer publishes a residence yield, and returns depend entirely on the operator's optional rental programme — whose revenue split, owner-night caps and blackout terms are usually not public. Ask for them in writing before you buy.

Three stand out. Around 80% of Maldivian islands sit less than a metre above sea level, so erosion, coastal protection and insurance costs bear directly on a 50-to-99-year lease. The economy is tourism-dependent — roughly 21% of GDP — and the World Bank cut 2026 growth to about 0.7% with public debt near 137% of GDP. Finally, foreign-currency access and profit repatriation depend on the rufiyaa's dollar peg holding, so confirm how your rental income will actually be paid out.