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The three types of post 1995 residential leases

12/4/2021

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The extensive consultation with all stakeholders of the white paper team before the Residential Leases Act came into effect established a need for 3 different residential contract scenarios:

  • Long Let Contracts
  • Short Let Contracts
  • Shared Residential Space Contracts

Please click on the above links for more detailed information on each of the three types of residential contracts. 

​​Moreover, it was established that these three renting scenarios needed to be distinct from holiday lets.  Short holiday lets fall under the jurisdiction of the Malta Travel and Tourism Services Act and completely depend on whether or not the person occupying the property for the duration of the short holiday let is a tourist or not.  This is how the Malta Travel and Tourism Services Act defines a tourist:  
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All three types of residential lease above must be registered with the Housing Authority.
 
For more information on contract registration, please click on this link:  
Essential information on the post-2020 rental contract​
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Essential information on the post 2020 rental contract

6/4/2021

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The  Residential Leases Act came into force on January 1st, 2020.  I will be  writing a series of information blogs which will hopefully help you become more aware of your rights and responsibilities under the new rent law. 

​This first blog in the series will include details of how to  make sure that your rental contract is  compliant with the Residential Leases Act.  Every rental contract must contain the seven essential requirements listed below in order for the registration process of the contract with the Housing Authority to be conducted as smoothly and efficiently as possible.  
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 If the contract does not contain one or more of the above seven essential requirements, then it will not be possible to register the contract with the Housing Authority and the contract will be null and void.  ​ Please note in particular the inventory, which is often forgotten. 

Also please remember to get your landlord to sign Arms Form N - Verification of Pending Dues.  This will zero the Arms bill so that you will not pay for the bills of previous occupants of the rental property.  Please click on the link below for a copy of Arms Form N:  
n-_authorisation_of_verification_of_pending_dues.pdf
File Size: 111 kb
File Type: pdf
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Finally please remember to ask your landlord to sign Arms Form H - Change in the number of persons declaration.  Your landlord will complete Section A of this form; all the occupants of the rental property will complete Section B.  Landlord and occupants will have to also provide copies of photo identification.  This will make sure that you are on the correct residential utility tariff for people living in their primary residence.  The default tariff is the second home tariff which is extortionate, especially for water.  The only way to be on the correct utility tariff for people living in their primary residence is via Arms Form H.  Please click on the link below to download this form:   
h_-change_in_number_of_persons_declaration_31072015__1_.pdf
File Size: 1182 kb
File Type: pdf
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For a standard rental contract taken from the very useful and official Housing Authority rental website, please click on the link below:   ​
long-private-residential-leases.pdf
File Size: 170 kb
File Type: pdf
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The landlord must register the contract with the Housing Authority within ten days of the commencement of the lease.   If the lease is registered after ten days then there will be an additional fee. If the landlord fails to register the contract within the ten days, then the tenant can register the rental contract at the expense of the landlord.  ​
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It is in both your interests and the interests of the landlord to make sure that the contract is registered.  If it is not registered, neither party will be able to access the protection provided by the Residential Leases Act or the Maltese Civil Code.  Moreover, neither party will be able to submit a dispute. The facility of submitting an online dispute costs 10 euro and a decision will be made by the Dispute Panel within 5 working days of last submissions.  There are many clauses in the new rent law which protect the tenant from various problems to do with renting, for example, the overpayment on their consumption of water and electricity and the unjustified retention of their deposit.  I will be looking at these in more detail in other blogs.  This means that a tenant will definitely win a dispute if, for example, they are on the incorrect Arms tariff for people living in their primary residence.  

If the landlord refuses to register the contract and the tenant cannot register it because it is missing one of the seven essential requirements, then there is the option of reporting the tenancy.  This will  mean  fines / prosecution in a criminal and / or civil court of law for the landlord plus the Housing Authority fixing the rent for the tenant at below market rent rates. Th
e Housing Authority will first have to establish that the tenant is indeed living in the rental property.  

One final note.  Please do not be surprised if your rental contract contains clauses which are forbidden clauses, listed under Article 7 of the Residential Leases Act.  The Housing Authority has limited resources.  It registered circa 30 000 rental contracts in the first year of the Residential Leases Act, and therefore is unable to check the minute detail of every clause of every contract.  These clauses will hopefully die a natural death as more and more letting agents / landlords / tenants learn more about the intricacies of the 2020 Residential Leases Act. Rest assured, however, that these clauses are completely without effect.  Therefore you can ignore them completely and with no ill effect.  Also, please rest assured that the Residential Leases Act and the Maltese Civil Code trump any clause in any rental contract, no matter what any letting agent or landlord may tell you.  
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Onwards with the fight against the 'masters of the universe'

23/7/2018

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So,

the state ignores categorical proof that a consumer of electricity has been overcharged by €152.92 on their electricity bill, in contravention of the Electricity Supply Regulations which stipulate that the quotas of units at the cheaper rates are annual quotas, not two monthly quotas;

the state overcharges us when we were tenants by €3309.84 over 35 months and ignores my request to re calculate the cost of our consumption on the tariff meant for primary residences, not secondary residences. With the result that I have to attend court once a month for 2 years to see who was responsible for the overcharge - my landlord or I. For the first few months of this action, we endure a precautionary garnishee order on our bank account and my salary;

the state does a Pontius Pilate and blames the Secretariat for Catholic Education for underpaying me by circa €20 000, in breach of EU law. When it is the state which is responsible for the approval of church school teachers, when it is the state which decreed that I was to start at the bottom of the Teacher Salary Scale and when it is the state that pays the salary of church school teachers;
​
the Secretariat for Catholic Education quotes the 2013 MUT / MEDE agreement as reason for not paying me arrears for the first 3 years. Does it understand that this is based on the 2002 Equal Pay for Equal Work Act, which is of dodgy legality? Also, in my case, it doesn't apply because of


EU Article 7(4) Reg. 492/2011:

• ‘Any clause of a collective or individual agreement or of any other collective regulation concerning eligibility for employment, remuneration and other conditions of work or dismissal shall be null and void in so far as it lays down or authorizes discriminatory conditions in respect of workers who are nationals of the other Member States’

my employer - basically, the Church - disregards how its practice of ignoring prior teaching experience for teachers who moved sector pre 2015 is in breach of the Universal declaration of fundamental human rights and colludes with the state to deprive me of equal pay for equal work.

This is Article 23 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

(1) Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.
(2) Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work.
(3) Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection.
(4) Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.


There's more but I think I'll stop here.

Please note that it is not just the money that exercises me no end. It's the casualness by which the state, employers, a monopoly utility billing company steals WITH IMPUNITY from the ordinary person, trying to live their life as best they can. The IMPUNITY with which Maltese constitutional law, EU law, fundamental human rights... are breached.

The casualness is obscene. The entitlement to your money, the callousness by which they conduct their wars of attrition...

Also, please note that this behaviour is universal. It is not aimed at just me. These breaches of law, of all jurisdictions, are systemic, institutionalised.

Which brings me to my complete incomprehension that the people -  the ordinary people - stand for this arrogant maladministration. If only people could see the power we have when we act as a collective.   If only people would see that we have to step up.    How much more circumvention of the maladministration can we take?  Is this what we want for Malta's next generation?  
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The Arms billing system is finally under scrutiny

29/4/2018

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,There were no less than three articles on Arms in  The Malta Independent over the weekend, including Saturday's editorial.  It is good to see that finally the spotlight is on Arms and its systemic incorrect implementation of its own billing system, in highly probable contravention of the Electricity and Water Supply Regulations.  

The editorial describes how increased frequency of billing will be extremely likely to cost you more.   This is because periods of low consumption will not offset periods of higher consumption.    Incidentally this is the reason for the lengthy disclaimer on the  online Arms calculator. 

No, contrary to what some people think, the online  Arms calculator cannot ever be wrong.   The online calculator would consist of all the algorithms described in Understanding the Arms bill (1) , Understanding the Arms bill (2)  and Understanding the Arms bill (3). 

So what possible reason could there be for this disclaimer?  The answer is that the cost of your consumption of electricity and water depends very much on the billing period.   

 For an actual example, please see   here  how our annual consumption of   water and electricity over the last year cost us €1726.40 when calculated in six bills, every 2 months,  whilst using the Arms online calculator, we can see that it cost us  €1436.06, when the cost was calculated over the year.  

This is the Malta Independent editorial:    TMID editorial - Arms:  Robbing Peter to pay Paul

 In this  article of TMID journalist Helena Grech,  it is revealed that it is also the eco reduction  that is being calculated pro rata.   So consumers lose out yet again.

​I am glad to see that UHM Voice of the Workers is launching an investigation into the Arms billing scheme.  It is also asking the Malta Council for Economic and Social Development to look into this.    (see here) 

In March earlier this year, I gave this presentation to the Malta Council for Economic and Social Development, on how tenants in Malta endure extortion on top of extortion.
Tenants do not exist for Arms
File Size: 4172 kb
File Type: pptx
Download File

Followers of this blog will understand that if homeowners have it bad, tenants have it much worse.  They have no easy access to the Arms account and they usually are on the incorrectly applied summer residence tariff,  misleadingly named the domestic tariff. 

This is extortionate - there are no eco reductions applicable on this tariff and no allowances per person for water at cheaper rates.  So, no matter how many people live in a household, the cost of the water consumed is €2.19 per cubic metre for the first 33 cubic metres of water, followed by an eye watering €5.14 per cubic metre of water.   

Contrast this to the €1.40 per cubic metre payable on the 33 cubic metres of water PER PERSON per year on the correct residential tariff.   The cost of electricity  per unit is also greater compared to the cost on the correct residential tariff.  

In this presentation I also discuss the huge issue of  prepaid meters, where landlords are free to charge whatever they want.  Arms disclaims all responsibility for prepaid meters.

Every single aspect of the Arms billing system needs to be studied carefully.  These are not one off anomalies.   This is a systemic incorrect  implementation of the Arms billing system.  It is  highly likely that this billing system is in contravention of the Water and Electricity Supply Regulations.   

​Finally,  most disturbingly of all, there are strong indications that these contraventions are deliberate.  Could it be that Arms is doing whatever it takes to fulfil  its stated mission, to 

"
increase the business value of its business owners and partners by: 

• Identifying and managing opportunities of revenue growth; 
• Continually improving the quality and efficiency of the services it provides; 
• And maximising its capital utilisation."?

  Arms mission statement
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Understanding the Arms bill (3)

15/4/2018

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Why shorter Arms billing periods could be costing you
                           
Over the year 10th March, 2017 to 9th March, 2018, our household of 5 was billed six times – once every two months. These are the 6 bills we have received over the year:

10/3/2017 to 11/5/2017: €285.18
12/5/2017 to 12/7/2017 €133.54
13/7/2017 to 11/9/2017 €260.15
12/9/2017 to 10/11/2017 €106.20
11/11/2017 to 11/1/2018 €443.69
12/1/2018 to 9/3/2018 €497.64

Total: €1726.40

I added the cost of these 6 Arms bills and then compared this total to the online Arms calculation for the year.  
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Interestingly, the online Arms calculator contains a very lengthy, legalistic disclaimer.  This is clearly due to the fact that Arms recognizes that the cost of the Arms bill will depend very much on the billing period in question.

When I used the online calculator to calculate the cost of our Arms bill over the billing period of this year, I found that if the billing period was 1 year instead of 2 months,  then the cost  would be €1436.06.                          

€1726.40 - €1436.06 = €290.34

So, paying for our consumption over 6 bills in 1 year is €290.34 more expensive than paying it all at the end of the year.
 
This is usually on two counts:
  • The household will be less likely to hit the very expensive fourth band of €0.3420 per unit because the leftover quota for periods of lesser consumption will compensate for periods of higher consumption.  This is by far the more important count.
  • The household will be more likely to be eligible for an eco reduction because, again, the leftover eco reduction applicable on periods of low consumption will compensate for periods of higher consumption.
It is inconceivable to me that Arms - the sole, state owned utility billing company -  uses all means necessary to increase the revenue from the ordinary Maltese resident.  The spirit of this billing system - if ever there were one – is being twisted completely out of all recognition.  The bottom line is that consumers of  electricity in Malta are paying well over the odds for their consumption.
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