Geostat published its residential property price index for the third quarter of 2026 on 23 October. For newly built housing in Tbilisi, measured in lari, the index rose 1.5% against the second quarter and 5.9% against the same quarter of 2025. Inside that total the two halves of the market have come apart: flats rose 1.2% on the quarter and 5.6% on the year, while detached houses rose 2.7% and 7.0%. The index is built from asking prices collected from listings, not from completed sales, which is worth remembering before reading it as what buyers actually paid.
A gap of one and a half points
Five point six against seven point zero does not sound like much until you compound it. A flat and a house bought at the same price at the start of the year sit about one and a half percentage points apart after twelve months, and that difference is the whole of a year's rental yield on some Tbilisi stock. The quarterly figures point the same way, with houses up more than twice as much as flats in three months. Nothing in a single quarter proves a trend, but the direction matches what has been visible in permits: the supply arriving in Tbilisi is overwhelmingly flats, and houses are the segment where new competition is thin.
Why asking prices are not sale prices
The index is compiled from offer prices scraped from listings. In a market where discounting happens in the room rather than on the page, that method will read high when bargaining power shifts to buyers and will miss the moment it shifts, because a seller who takes less rarely edits the advertisement afterwards. The useful way to read a series like this is as a measure of what sellers believe, tracked consistently over time. Believing something for four quarters in a row is itself information, but an owner setting a price this month should treat the index as the ceiling of the conversation rather than its outcome.
Lari, not dollars
This series is measured in lari. Most foreign buyers think in dollars or euros, and a price rising in lari can be flat or falling in the currency the buyer earns, depending on the exchange rate over the same period. Anyone comparing this release with a dollar-denominated index from a bank or a brokerage is comparing two different questions, and the gap between them is not evidence that one of them is wrong. The practical habit is to decide which currency the decision is actually made in, then read only the series measured in it.
What an owner does with this
If you are weighing whether to sell or to let, the number that matters is not the index but the spread between the two segments. An owner of a detached house on the edge of the city is in the firmer half of the market and can afford to test a price. An owner of a flat in a building where thirty similar units are also for sale is competing against new supply and should expect the asking price to be the opening of a negotiation. In both cases the index is a backdrop. The decision is made by walking the comparable listings in the same building or the same street, and counting how many of them have not moved in three months.
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.
