It's all about the money

Abstract

I agree with Pierre Mizzi, marketing director of Duplex Real Estate Branding, that the 10 Cape Verde islands 500 km to the west of Africa and Malta have very little in common ("Putting Malta on the international property map", The Sunday Times, March 4). However, according to Mr Mizzi, the two archipelagoes differ mainly in the geographical location and the fact that Cape Verde has only recently emerged on the tourism map. Hence, Mr Mizzi reasons that, if Cape Verde's real estate market for foreigners is proceeding at full throttle, why not Malta's? A simple look at an atlas would give Mr Mizzi the answer - the Cape Verde islands have a combined area of more than 10 times that of Malta and are inhabited by 420,000 people, roughly the same as us. Hence, this effectively gives Cape Verde a population density which is almost 10 times less than ours.