The house move, the money and the paperwork that run alongside bringing a pet to Malta. The pet itself is on the Relocation Toolkit — this page is everything else.
The pet's paperwork is the part with waiting periods you cannot shorten, so it usually sets the date and everything else fits around it:
Check the current rules for your own country of origin against the VRD's own guidance before you book anything — the requirements differ by country and they change.
Work through the 16-step Relocation Toolkit checklist if you have not already; it saves your progress and covers arrival admin as well as the flight.
Malta is in the EU customs territory. If you are moving your normal home from outside the EU (the UK included), your used household goods can come in free of import duty and 18% import VAT under Transfer of Residence relief — but only if the conditions are met and the declaration is right:
A cash deposit is taken as security, refundable after a year once you can prove you actually took up residence. Malta Customs' own pages disagree with each other on the test — six months of residence in one place, a full year in another — so confirm the current requirement with them rather than relying on the deposit coming back on schedule.
The conditions above are Malta Customs' own; read them at customs.gov.mt before you brief a mover, because the inventory and the declaration are what decide whether you pay 18% or nothing.
Malta has no land border, so a household move arrives by sea — usually by road to a Mediterranean port and then by ferry, or in a container into Malta Freeport at Marsaxlokk. Published transit times vary widely (roughly two to three weeks port-to-port for a full container, longer for a shared one), and your door-to-door time includes collection, customs clearance and delivery after the ship lands.
Published door-to-door examples from one UK mover, to show the shape of the market rather than to quote you: from about £865 for a small shared-container move, from about £3,015 for a three-bedroom house in a 20ft container, and from about £5,829 for four to five bedrooms in a 40ft container. Every quote depends on volume, access at both ends and the services included.
If you are paying a deposit, a rent up front or a house purchase from savings in another currency, the important number is not the advertised fee. It is the exchange rate they apply against the mid-market rate, multiplied by the size of the transfer — on a large transfer the margin is usually much bigger than the fee.
This is the part people underestimate. A no-pets clause is common in Malta — most often in the older walk-up blocks, and landlords do enforce it — so treat pet-friendly letting as something you arrange, in writing, rather than something you assume. It is easier in newer buildings, in properties with outside space, and with landlords who have rented to expat tenants before.
Once you are here, the directory lists vets, groomers, sitters and walkers across Malta and Gozo — including which of them have a number you can message, not only ring.
Pet insurance is written here by local insurers and agencies — MAPFRE Middlesea, Laferla, Atlas and PostaInsure are the names you will be quoted — and the market is small. The cover we have read splits into accident cover with an optional illness extension, and that illness extension is typically capped per policy period with pre-existing conditions excluded. Read the cap and the exclusions before you rely on it for anything serious.
Home contents insurance is separate, and worth arranging before your shipment clears customs rather than after.
We do not sell position in our directory and a listing is not an endorsement — see For pet businesses.
On this page, when we have a commercial arrangement with a company we recommend, the link is labelled Ad and marked as a sponsored link. We only add one when we have an arrangement with the company and would recommend it anyway; where we have none, there is no link to fill the space.
Everything above is general guidance for planning, not customs, legal, tax or insurance advice for your circumstances. If something here is out of date or wrong, tell us — [email protected] — and we will fix it.