Batumi daily rates stood still while prices rose — and yields paid for it

Galt & Taggart's Batumi review, summarised by Investor.ge in April 2026, puts average turnkey prices at $1,569 per square metre in 2023, $1,699 in 2024 and $1,865 in 2025. Over the same stretch the average daily rental rate was about $35.6 and broadly flat. A yield is rent divided by price, so when the denominator climbs and the numerator does not, the result falls: gross rental yield went from 8.8% in 2024 to 7.4% in 2025. Nothing went wrong with the rental market; the entry price simply got higher.

The city is not one price. Old Batumi was reported above $3,000 a square metre while peripheral zones sat below $1,500, and demand concentrated along the New Boulevard, with more than 6,800 transactions, and the Alley of Heroes, with nearly 4,000 units sold. A flat bought at periphery prices that still rents at something near the city's average daily rate produces a very different yield from the same rent against an Old Batumi price. The published average is the midpoint of that spread, not a forecast for any one building.

The review described 2026 as a year of consolidation rather than expansion: primary-market sales broadly flat, some growth possible on the secondary market, and price growth of 4-6% a year. It also flagged the risks plainly — supply running ahead of demand, unsold inventory accumulating, falling yields raising questions about how durable investment-led demand is, and geopolitical tension as a short-term risk to Israeli buying. That was a forecast made in spring; what matters now is whether the daily rate finally moved this season.

Ask for the occupancy assumption in writing, not just the nightly rate: 7.4% gross on a coastal flat already assumes a certain number of filled nights across a short season. Then take off the management cut, the service charge, utilities between guests, platform commissions and the tax, and compare what is left with what a plain long lease would pay with none of the work. If the two land close together, the short-let premium is being spent on effort rather than earned.