A foreigner can buy a flat in Georgia but not a vineyard — and the workaround has a government gate on it

Foreign individuals and foreign legal entities cannot own agricultural land in Georgia. The restriction rests on a constitutional provision treating farmland as a resource of special national importance and is implemented through the law on agricultural land ownership. Everything else in property is open: a foreign buyer or a foreign company faces no nationality restriction on residential or commercial real estate, which is handled under ordinary civil and company law. This is why a foreigner can complete a flat purchase in an afternoon and run into a wall on a plot of farmland.

First, inheritance: a foreign national who inherits agricultural land may keep it, and that right attaches to the person rather than being a general permission to buy more. Second, a legal entity registered in Georgia and owned by foreigners may hold agricultural land, but only with explicit authorisation from the Government of Georgia, granted on an approved investment plan connected to agriculture or rural development. The second route is the one marketed to buyers as "just set up a Georgian company" — which skips the part that matters, namely that a government decision stands between the company and the title.

The decisive fact is the designated status of the plot in the public registry, not what is growing on it or what the seller calls it. A plot described as a garden, an orchard or a building site may still be registered as agricultural, and a change of designated use is a separate administrative process with its own conditions. Before any payment, pull the registry extract, read the designated category, and if it says agricultural, get written legal advice on whether your intended structure is lawful. A deposit paid on an assumption about land category is the most expensive kind of mistake in Georgian property, because the problem appears only at registration.