Dubai rents run about 245 per cent above Tbilisi — but local purchasing power there is 141 per cent higher

On crowdsourced price data read this week, Dubai is 60 per cent more expensive than Tbilisi excluding rent and 106.3 per cent more expensive including it. Rent is where the distance opens: 245.4 per cent higher across all rent lines. Restaurants are 67.7 per cent higher and groceries 23.5 per cent higher. A one-bedroom in the city centre is listed at 1,756 lari a month in Tbilisi against 6,259 lari in Dubai. On purchase price per unit of area in the centre, Dubai is reported roughly three times Tbilisi.

Local purchasing power is reported 141.5 per cent higher in Dubai than in Tbilisi. That single line is why a cost comparison on its own does not settle an investment question. Dubai is expensive relative to its own incomes by much less than it is expensive relative to Georgian incomes, which is another way of saying its rents are supported by what tenants there earn. A Tbilisi landlord's rent is supported by Georgian wages, plus whatever share of demand comes from visitors and non-residents. Those are different foundations under the same yield number.

Gulf markets are an explicit focus for the larger Georgian developers: at the February 2026 real estate forum in Tbilisi, Archi said it would keep targeting GCC markets with investor support and asset management, and NEXT Property described active work in the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia with Arabic-speaking sales teams. The entry-price gap above is the core of that pitch. The honest framing is that a Tbilisi or Batumi unit costs a fraction of a Dubai one — not that it carries the same depth of tenant demand, liquidity on exit, or regulatory track record.

Numbeo is user-submitted rather than official, with 155 contributors recorded for Tbilisi and 269 for Dubai over the previous twelve months. It is a useful rough gauge of relative cost and a poor basis for a purchase decision. If you are weighing an actual transaction, the figures worth gathering are transacted prices per square metre for your specific building type, achieved rents in that district rather than asking rents, and the running costs — service charge, management fee and void allowance — that a yield headline usually leaves out.