For a foreign investor in a Maldives resort asset, the legal interest is often leasehold rather than freehold. The head lease is therefore not background paperwork; it is part of the asset you are valuing. Each tourist resort is leased from Government, and secondary rights can sit beneath that government lease. Where a strata residence is involved, the buyer’s strata lease is expressly subordinate to the primary or head lease and cannot run beyond it.
Lease due diligence
Read the full lease history
Start with remaining term, not headline price. Confirm the executed head lease and every addendum, the leaseholder’s identity and title, the approved development and opening obligations, any extensions, and whether there are unresolved defaults, notices or breaches. Then map the rights already granted over the property: registered subleases, mortgages, management rights, strata interests and other interests that may affect control, transfer or financing.
Structure changes the investigation
Transaction structure matters as well. In the Maldives, a resort acquisition may be implemented as an asset acquisition or a share acquisition. Asset deals involving tourism property can require separate approvals for regulated leases and licences, while a share deal leaves the underlying company, assets and contracts in place but changes ownership at company level.
Value the rights you can use
The valuation question is not only, “What is this resort worth?” It is, “What leasehold interest remains, on what conditions, and can that interest be transferred, financed and operated in the way the investment model assumes?”
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