A Georgian title transfer takes four working days, or the same day if you pay for speed — and closing costs stay under one percent

Title transfers are handled at a Public Service Hall. Buyer and seller — or their authorised representatives — attend, sign, pay the registration fee, and the title moves. Standard processing is described as four business days, with same-day service available for a higher fee. There is no chain, no exchange-and-completion gap and no separate conveyancing stage of the kind buyers from the United Kingdom or the United States expect. The whole administrative event can be over inside a morning, which is a genuine advantage and also the reason mistakes here are hard to unwind.

Before signing anything, an extract from the public registry shows who is actually registered as owner and whether the property carries a mortgage, a lien or a live dispute. The guide puts the cost of an extract at around fifteen lari. Against a purchase price in the hundreds of thousands, that is the single best-value document in the transaction, and it should be pulled close to the signing date rather than relied on from weeks earlier — a charge registered in the interim is exactly the sort of thing a stale extract will not show.

The guide sets out the cost side for a purchase of around USD 120,000: a registration fee in the range of fifty to two hundred lari depending on speed, legal fees of roughly three hundred to eight hundred dollars for due diligence and the contract, and notary charges of around one hundred and fifty to two hundred and fifty dollars if a power of attorney is used. The total lands between about three hundred and fifty and eleven hundred dollars, under one percent of the price. Compared with most European markets that is unusually low, and it means the sensible place to spend more is the legal check rather than the paperwork.

A purchase can be completed without flying in, using a power of attorney notarised and apostilled at home or executed at a Georgian embassy or consulate. The limit of all this efficiency is that registration proves ownership of something that exists. An off-plan purchase is a contract with a developer, not a registered title, and the guide is blunt about the exposure: delays measured in months or years, quality that does not match the renders, and insolvency in which the money is simply gone. Fast, cheap registration is a reason to buy completed stock with confidence, not a reason to treat a pre-construction contract as the same kind of asset.