A Tbilisi short-let grossed ₾16,604 over twelve months
Across 6,075 active Tbilisi listings in the twelve months to September 2026, AirROI puts average revenue at ₾16,604 per listing, gross and before costs, on 41.6% occupancy of nights the listing was open and an average daily rate of ₾153. At the National Bank's official rate for today, 2.5959 lari to the dollar, that gross is about USD 6,400 a year, or USD 533 a month. A 50 to 60 square metre flat let on a long lease was advertised at roughly USD 500 to 600 a month earlier this year. The two figures are closer than the sales pitch for short-letting suggests.
What 41.6% occupancy actually means
The occupancy figure is calculated on nights the listing was open for booking, not on all 365 nights of the year. That distinction matters in both directions. A host who blocks the calendar for three months and fills the rest will show high occupancy and low revenue; a host who keeps the flat open all year and fills four nights in ten shows the same percentage against a much larger base. The average revenue figure of ₾16,604 is spread across all 6,075 listings, including ones that were only live for part of the period, so it is an average of a mixed population rather than the expected return on a flat let professionally all year.
Gross against net is where the decision is made
The ₾16,604 is explicitly gross, before costs and taxes. A short-let carries platform commission, cleaning between stays, laundry, utilities and internet that a long lease normally does not, consumables, a higher rate of wear, and either management fees or the owner's own time. A long lease carries almost none of that: one tenant, one handover, utilities usually on the tenant, and a vacancy risk measured in weeks per year rather than nights per month. Two gross figures that look similar can sit either side of a wide gap once those lines are filled in, which is why the comparison has to be run on the specific flat rather than on the city average.
Where the city average hides the answer
The long-lease side of the comparison is not one number either. Asking rents per square metre in April 2026 ranged from about USD 8.2 in Samgori and USD 8.6 in Gldani to USD 11.3 in Saburtalo, USD 12.7 in Mtatsminda and USD 14.2 in Vake, against a citywide USD 10.0. Short-let demand is not distributed the same way: it concentrates heavily on the central and old-town districts and thins out fast in the residential blocks. The honest version of the sell-or-rent question is therefore district-specific. A central flat may genuinely earn more on nights than on months; the same flat two metro stops out may not, and the city-wide averages will not tell you which you own.
Six thousand competitors is the other half of the number
6,075 active listings in one city is the supply side of the same statistic, and it is the part that decides whether today's ₾153 average nightly rate survives next season. Short-let supply can be added in weeks — a furnished flat and a listing, with no planning process and no construction — which means any gap between short-let and long-lease returns tends to close as owners move across to chase it. If you are weighing the switch on the strength of a gross figure, the question to ask is not what the flat would have earned over the last twelve months, but what it earns once the next several hundred owners have read the same number.
Written by us from the source linked above, not investment, legal or tax advice. Figures and rules change — confirm anything that matters before acting on it.
