Nobody knows what a Maldivian home sells for
There is no transaction register, no price index and no rent index anywhere in the Maldives. The market's entire evidence base is asking prices, rental listings and administered rates — assembled here into per-segment ranges, the reference card for every valuation in this program.
The ceiling of what can be known
Every land transfer in the Maldives must be registered. Island and city councils maintain land registries under the Land Act (1/2002), overseen by the housing ministry, and an unregistered transfer has no enforceable value [OFFICIAL, law]. But no register of transaction prices is published — not by councils, not by HDC for its own tender outcomes, not by anyone. Legal commentary adds that while the 15% land-sales tax was in force (repealed January 2020 — per the law-and-tax dossier), parties routinely under-declared prices to evade it [COMMENTARY], so even the unpublished registry record is unreliable for the years when most of Malé’s stock last traded. Third parties that publish “Maldives house price” figures — Global Property Guide, Numbeo, Properstar — are scraping listings or crowdsourcing a handful of entries; they are commentary, not measurement.
This defines the honest ceiling of this paper. What exists, by evidence tier:
| Tier | What exists in the Maldives, July 2026 |
|---|---|
| TRANSACTION | Nothing. No public sale price has ever been verified |
| OFFICIAL | Administered rents (Hiyaa, FDC), HDC tender floor prices, one rent survey (HIES 2019) |
| ASKING / LISTING | A structured-portal sample: roughly 30 usable observations across Boahiyaa, Kobapages and Property.mv, retrieved 2026-07-12 |
| INDUSTRY-EST / MEDIA | Broker commentary, press features on informal sublets, the parallel FX rate |
| OWN-CALC | Every per-sqft figure and every yield in this paper, computed from the above |
Two biases follow from the sample’s construction and cannot be corrected, only stated. First, listings live on portals because they have not sold or let — a snapshot of live asks skews ambitious. Second, the bulk of the market clears through Facebook groups, ibay.com.mv and word of mouth, none of it sampled here. Ranges, not point estimates, are the only honest output, and everything below is a range.
Land: the private market asks more than the state’s own floors
Land is the segment where official and private evidence can be put side by side, because HDC publishes floor prices for its Hulhumalé Phase 2 plot tenders — floors, not clearing prices; winning bids have never been published.
| Evidence | Location | Price | Tier |
|---|---|---|---|
| Private plot asks (n=3) | Malé | MVR 7,240–9,410/sqft (USD 470–610) | [ASKING] |
| Private plot ask (n=1) | Hulhumalé | MVR 10,650/sqft (USD 691) | [ASKING] |
| HDC tender floors, Aug 2022 | Hulhumalé Ph2 waterfront | MVR 5,500–6,500/sqft | [OFFICIAL, floor] |
| HDC tender floors, Sep 2024 | Hulhumalé Ph2 waterfront | MVR 4,000–4,500/sqft | [OFFICIAL, floor] |
| HDC developer land (~2019–21) | Hulhumalé | MVR 2,451–2,530/sqft | [OFFICIAL, floor] |
| Commercial plot ask | K. Himmafushi | MVR 1,440–1,630/sqft | [ASKING] |
| Beachfront plot ask | R. Vaadhoo (outer atoll) | MVR 675/sqft (USD 44) | [ASKING] |
Three readings. First, Malé residential land asks about MVR 7,200–9,400/sqft (roughly MVR 78,000–101,000/sqm) [ASKING, n=3, Jul 2026] — 1.6 to 2.4 times the state’s current Hulhumalé floors. That gap is the scarcity premium of the old capital stated as a number, and it is consistent with the Greater Malé paper’s finding that Malé land asks price above Malé built space.
Second, HDC’s floors fell 20–30% between the August 2022 and September 2024 tenders [OFFICIAL] — from MVR 5,500–6,500/sqft to MVR 4,000–4,500/sqft. Floor prices are administered, so this is a policy decision, not a market print; but a state land monopolist does not cut its reserve price after a tender that cleared briskly. The likeliest causal reading is that the 2022 round moved slowly at those levels — which no one can verify, because results were never published. A conflict carries with the 2022 figures: the report-derived assignment puts beachfront at 5,500 and beach-side at 6,500, the inverse of the normal premium and of the 2024 tender’s ordering. The 5,500–6,500 range is solid; the row assignment is not, and we carry it as a range.
Third, the Malé-to-outer-atoll land gradient is roughly 10–14x [OWN-CALC on ASKING]: an outer-atoll beachfront plot can ask under MVR 700/sqft against Malé’s 7,200–9,400. Greater-Malé-ring islands (the Himmafushi observation, about MVR 1,400–1,600/sqft) sit a fifth of the way up that ladder.
One material conflict cannot be resolved from public data and is carried forward rather than averaged: broker commentary in our Malé land-economics dossier quotes prime Malé land at MVR 12,000–20,000/sqft [INDUSTRY-EST, 2026], and a government administered sale of 19 Malé plots (vintage ~2018–19, date unverified) ran at MVR 15,000/sqft [MEDIA]. The portal sample tops out at 9,410. Both can be simultaneously true — the portal plots are small (425–1,690 sqft) and non-prime, and broker quotes for trophy frontage are aspirational — but with no transaction register there is no way to arbitrate. Valuations downstream should treat MVR 7,200–9,400 as the observable ask band and 12,000–20,000 as an unverified prime tail.
Built space for sale: MVR 3,150–4,330 per sqft to the ask
The apartment sale sample (n=9 usable listings plus HDC’s Vinares price list) clusters tightly by Maldivian standards:
| Product | Location | Size | Ask | MVR/sqft [OWN-CALC] | Tier |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vinares 3-room (HDC) | Hulhumalé Ph2 | 883–902 sqft (82–84 sqm) | MVR 2.5–2.7M (USD 162–175k) | 2,770–3,060 | [ASKING, policy] |
| Ma. Aafaluge units | Malé | 968–1,108 sqft | from MVR 3.485M (USD 226k) | 3,150–3,600 | [ASKING] |
| Blue Lagoon 2–3BR | Hulhumalé Ph2 | 1,035–2,085 sqft | from MVR 3.91M | ~3,780 | [ASKING] |
| Mid-market 2–3BR (n=4) | Malé/Hulhumalé | 1,280–1,875 sqft | MVR 4.25–7.17M | 3,320–4,250 | [ASKING] |
| Central Park-area 4BR | Hulhumalé | 1,500 sqft | MVR 6.5M (USD 422k) | ~4,330 | [ASKING] |
| LuxaOne ODEON 3+1 | Malé | 1,141 sqft | MVR 5.69M (USD 369k) | ~4,990 | [ASKING] |
The working range for open-market new-builds is MVR 3,150–4,330/sqft (MVR 33,900–46,600/sqm; USD 204–281/sqft at the peg) [ASKING, Jul 2026], with a single-listing luxury tail near 5,000. HDC’s Vinares, at 2,770–3,060, priced 15–30% below the private market — a policy price for a sold-out semi-subsidised product, useful as a floor marker but not a market comp.
Two structural notes. There is no standalone-house market in Malé in any meaningful sense: whole old buildings rarely appear on structured portals, and when Malé property trades it effectively trades as land — the structures on 7,200–9,400/sqft plots are typically near-fully depreciated, and the land ask is the building ask. The Ma. Aafaluge listing shows the other side of that trade: the redevelopment output, new multi-storey units selling at 3,150–3,600/sqft on land bought or inherited below today’s asks. No listing was found pricing a “redevelopment plot with old structure” separately from land; the Malé land-economics paper models that as land minus demolition.
And one rejection, documented rather than silently dropped: the international portal Tranio markets “Malé luxury” at about MVR 171,000/sqm (USD 11,100/sqm) — 3–5 times every piece of local evidence (local luxury tops out near MVR 54,000/sqm). That figure likely describes foreign-marketed resort-residence leasehold mislabelled as Malé, and it is excluded from every range in this program. Genuine foreigner-purchasable product in the Maldives is resort-residence leasehold, covered in the law and commercial papers — not Malé apartments.
A cross-paper sampling note: the Greater Malé paper’s working range for Malé island apartments is MVR 2,700–3,800/sqft, built from a different sample (Premier Property listings plus the Numbeo aggregate, and including older stock). This paper’s 3,150–4,330 is a new-build range across Malé and Hulhumalé. The overlap is substantial and the difference is composition, not contradiction — but we state it rather than reconcile it, because with no transactions neither range can be validated against the other.
Administered housing: prices set by cabinet
The bottom of the Maldivian housing ladder is not a market at all. Its prices are cabinet decisions, and they move the way politics moves.
Data table
| Period | Hiyaa monthly rent (excl. maintenance) |
|---|---|
| 2021 | 7,500 |
| 2022 | 5,300 |
| 2024 | 3,984 |
| 2026 | 3,984 |
Hiyaa — 6,720 two-room, 550-sqft (51-sqm) flats in sixteen towers (per the history dossier; some accounts say 7,000 units) — was envisaged at about MVR 10,000–11,000 a month in planning, leased at MVR 7,500 plus 1,000 maintenance in 2021, cut to 5,300 around mid-2022, and cut again by cabinet decision in December 2023 to MVR 3,984.21 plus 1,000 maintenance — MVR 4,984 all-in (USD 323) — held for seven years after a MVR 200,000 discount to each lease [OFFICIAL decisions via press]. FDC’s Hulhumalé flats, priced February 2025, sit at MVR 9,000–10,500 all-in (2-room 8,000+1,000; 3-room 9,000+1,500) [OFFICIAL] — and even at those rates the government expects to need roughly MVR 100M a year to subsidise a project 85% financed by Exim Bank debt.
How far below market-clearing do these rates sit? The informal market answers directly. Hiyaa flats may not legally be sublet whole, but a 2022-era press feature documented rooms letting at MVR 450–650 per day [MEDIA], and a single room in a Vinares flat listed at MVR 8,500 a month [LISTING, Jul 2026] — one room renting for 1.7 times the administered payment on an entire Hiyaa flat. The economics are unambiguous: administered rents sit 2–8 times below what the space commands informally, which is why an informal sub-market exists inside social housing despite prohibition, and why (as the Greater Malé paper documents) only about 38% of HDC’s social tenants pay even the administered rent regularly. Note also what Hiyaa is not: a resale comp. Hiyaa is rent-to-own, title does not transfer until fully paid, and no legal resale market exists.
The rent ladder
The open-market rent sample (n=14 listings, retrieved 2026-07-12) stacks into a ladder from bed-spaces to luxury penthouses:
| Segment | Malé | Hulhumalé | Tier |
|---|---|---|---|
| Room / bed-space | MVR 6,000–10,000 | Vinares room 8,500 | [LISTING] |
| 1BR | 12,000–12,500 | 15,500 (marked leased) | [LISTING] |
| 2BR | 10,500–20,000 | ~21,000 furnished | [LISTING] |
| 3BR | 16,500–40,090 | 30,000–36,000 | [LISTING] |
| 4BR | — | 36,000–49,340 | [LISTING] |
| Luxury 3+1 furnished | — | 58,600 (USD 3,800) | [LISTING] |
The spreads within each row are informative, not noise. The Malé 2BR range — 10,500 for a first-floor unfurnished walk-up to 20,000 for a fourth-floor furnished unit with a lift — is the price of a lift and furniture in a city of six-storey walk-ups. The Malé 3BR range is wider still because its top is a different product in a different currency: unfurnished three-year leases at MVR 16,500 against furnished units quoted at USD 2,500–2,600 a month — MVR 38,550–40,090 at the peg, but about MVR 51,000–53,800 at the press-reported parallel rate of ~20.5–20.7 [MEDIA, per the FX dossier]. Five of the fourteen rent listings sampled were USD-quoted; quoting premium rents in dollars is partly an FX hedge, and where the landlord actually collects dollars, the parallel premium adds roughly a third to the rent’s MVR value. One outlier — a Hulhumalé “2BR” at MVR 60,000 — was excluded as likely serviced or misclassified.
Where unit sizes are visible, open-market rent per sqft runs about MVR 30–33/sqft/month for Hulhumalé family units (a 1,000-sqft 3BR at 30,000; Creek View’s 1,520 sqft at 49,340), against about MVR 9/sqft for Hiyaa’s administered rate and roughly MVR 50/sqft for a furnished 160-sqft expat room [OWN-CALC on LISTING] — small spaces carry the highest unit pricing, as everywhere.
The only official anchor is old: HIES 2019 measured mean monthly rent in Malé at MVR 13,494 (USD 875) [OFFICIAL], with roughly 74% of Malé’s population in rented accommodation per press summaries of the same survey. Whole-apartment listings in 2026 sit 1.5–3 times above that mean. How much of the gap is genuine rent inflation, how much is the furnished/new-let skew of listings, and how much is the seven-year gap cannot be decomposed — no rent series exists between the two observations. A cross-dossier discrepancy also carries here, unresolved: the Greater Malé paper works from a census-attributed April 2022 Malé mean of MVR 14,364 with bedroom-level splits, while this domain’s review found HIES 2019 as the last official rent measurement and no rent module in the 2022 census. The two official anchors are 6% apart and both far below 2026 listings; we record the conflict and use each paper’s own dossier basis rather than adjudicating between them.
Gross yields: 4.5–8.5%, asking on asking
Dividing asking rents by asking prices for matched product gives the only yield evidence this market can produce:
| Matched pair | Price basis | Rent basis | Gross yield [OWN-CALC] |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hulhumalé new-build 2BR | MVR 3.91–4.7M | MVR 18,000–22,000/mo | 4.6–6.8% |
| Hulhumalé 3BR | MVR 7.17M | MVR 30,000–36,000/mo | 5.0–6.0% |
| Malé 3BR unfurnished | MVR 3.485M | MVR 16,500–20,000/mo | 5.7–6.9% |
| Malé 3+1 furnished/luxury | MVR 5.69M | MVR 38,550–40,090/mo | 8.1–8.5% |
| Vinares (weak: one room x2) | MVR 2.6M | ~MVR 17,000/mo | ~7.8%, low confidence |
The indicative all-segment band is roughly 4.5–8.5% gross, centred near 6–7% [OWN-CALC]. Three caveats govern its use. First, both numerator and denominator are asks, so the ratio is more robust than either level — a seller’s optimism and a landlord’s optimism partially cancel — but it is still not a measured return. Second, the top of the band is inflated by product mismatch: the 8%+ pairs divide furnished, USD-quoted rents by unfurnished asking prices. Third, the band is gross. Net of maintenance, furnishing amortisation, vacancy and management, achieved yields plausibly run 1.5–3.0 points lower [OWN-CALC assumption, not evidence] — call it roughly 3.5–6% net at the peg.
The FX wedge cuts the other way for dollar-collecting landlords. A rent of USD 2,600 converted at the parallel rate rather than the peg is worth about a third more in MVR; a landlord with genuine USD collection on a MVR-priced asset earns an effective MVR yield up to a third higher on the rent component than the peg-based figures above. This single mechanism — peg-priced assets, partially dollarised rents, a 31–34% parallel premium [MEDIA, per the FX dossier] — is the strongest pure-carry argument in Maldivian residential property, and it is entirely a bet on the FX regime, covered in the money-and-banking paper.
These yields also frame the redevelopment question from the land-economics paper: at asking land prices of 7,200–9,400/sqft, buy-land-and-build in Malé pencils to roughly 4–5% gross — the bottom of this band — which is why redevelopment happens overwhelmingly on inherited, zero-basis land, and why plots bought at today’s asks mostly stay as asks.
The segments without markets
The brief for this paper lists segments the market itself does not price. Stating their absence is part of the evidence base:
- Studios: effectively none exist in Malé stock; no studio listing was observed. The room/bed-space market (MVR 6,000–10,000) is the studio substitute.
- Worker accommodation: the visible market is rooms at MVR 6,000–10,000 and expat-targeted doubles near 8,000 (about 4,000 per bed) [LISTING]. Dorm-style accommodation for construction workers — 4 to 8 to a room, the housing reality for much of the 130,000+ foreign workforce — runs through employers and informal channels and is invisible to portals. No official statistic on worker-accommodation rents or stock exists; the census counts labour-quarter households but publishes no rents.
- Short-term rentals: Hulhumalé guesthouse OTA rack rates average about USD 128/night, budget properties from USD 40, observed 3-star band USD 29–125 [LISTING, Jul 2026]. These are rack rates; achieved ADR and occupancy are published nowhere. One asset datapoint: a 4,700-sqft Thulusdhoo guesthouse asking USD 700,000 [ASKING]. Guesthouse economics belong to the commercial paper.
- Social-housing resale: legally nonexistent (Hiyaa title transfers only when fully paid), so the country’s largest single housing estate produces zero price evidence.
- Old Malé buildings as a distinct asset: priced as land, as above; no separate market observable.
Source conflicts carried forward
| # | Conflict | Treatment |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | HDC Aug 2022 floors: beachfront/beach-side assignment inverted across reports | Carried as a 5,500–6,500 range; assignment flagged unreliable |
| 2 | Malé land: portal asks 7,240–9,410 vs broker prime quotes 12,000–20,000 [INDUSTRY-EST] and a ~2018–19 administered sale at 15,000 | Both carried; portal band used as observable, prime band as unverified tail |
| 3 | Tranio “Malé luxury USD 11,100/sqm” vs local evidence 3–5x lower | Rejected for use; retained as documented conflict |
| 4 | Hiyaa payment quoted as 3,984 / 4,984 / 5,300 across press | Reconciled: rent-only vs all-in vs pre-Dec-2023 rate; no true conflict |
| 5 | 2026 listing rents 1.5–3x the HIES 2019 official mean | Two different measurements, seven years apart; reported separately, never averaged |
| 6 | Official rent anchor: HIES 2019 MVR 13,494 vs census-attributed Apr 2022 MVR 14,364 (used in the Greater Malé paper) | Cross-dossier discrepancy; both stated, neither adjudicated |
| 7 | FDC 3-room “10,500” vs “9,000 + 1,500” | Resolved: 10,500 is the all-in total |
What we don’t know
- No transaction prices exist anywhere. HDC publishes tender floors but never winning bids; council registries publish nothing; portal “Sold” flags are unverified. Every per-sqft figure in this paper is an ask, a listing, or an official floor — and true prices, true yields and true appreciation are all unobservable.
- The sample is small and biased ambitious. Roughly 30 structured-portal observations, mostly undated, live on one retrieval day (2026-07-12), skewed toward what has not sold or let. The Facebook/ibay/word-of-mouth majority of the market is unsampled.
- Rent growth 2020–2026 is inference, not measurement. The last official rent observation is HIES 2019; the CPI housing sub-index does not track market rents and must not be used as a rent index.
- The parallel FX rate has no official series. The ~20.5–20.7 level is press-tier; the FX wedge in yields is directionally solid but imprecise.
- Whole segments are dark: worker dormitories, achieved guesthouse ADR/occupancy, ward-level Malé evidence, Villimalé entirely, and any resale of administered housing.
- What this paper can honestly deliver is therefore exactly what it has delivered: ranges with named sources and tiers, refreshed at each vantage — and the standing conclusion that until a transaction register exists, every Maldivian valuation is an argument about asks.