Mortgages averaged 11.74% in the second quarter — gross yields are around 7.4%

On National Bank of Georgia figures compiled by Global Property Guide and updated in August, the average mortgage rate was 11.74% in the second quarter of 2026, down from 12.04% in the first. The direction is mildly encouraging and the level is not: a decade of history on the same series runs roughly between 8% and 14%, with the peak at 14.21% at the end of 2015. Third-quarter data is not published yet.

Global Property Guide's February reading put gross rental yields nationally at 7.42%, with Tbilisi at 7.53% and Batumi at 7.31%. Gross means before management, vacancy, repairs, insurance and tax. So a borrower paying near 11.74% is funding an asset producing something under 7.42% net of nothing — the arithmetic does not work, and no amount of capital growth assumption makes it work reliably. This is why the local market is dominated by cash purchases and by developer instalment plans rather than bank finance.

If you can borrow more cheaply where you live, the sensible structure is usually to raise the money there and buy here outright — the comparison is your home rate against 11.74%, not your home rate against nothing. If you cannot, then the honest version of the plan is a cash purchase sized to what you have, or a developer instalment arrangement whose true cost you have worked out in an actual spreadsheet rather than accepted as interest-free.

Double-digit mortgage rates are also a statement about your buyer pool. At these levels the domestic borrower is largely priced out of the upper half of the market, which leaves cash buyers, foreign buyers and investors — a narrower set of people than a for-sale sign implies. If rates keep easing as they did between the first and second quarters, that pool widens slowly. It is a reason to be patient on price rather than to assume a queue.