Since July, a lari earner cannot take a mortgage in dollars below one million lari

The measure targets currency mismatch: a borrower earning in one currency and repaying in another carries the exchange rate as an uninsured cost. By lifting the threshold to a million lari, the central bank has pushed a larger slice of household borrowing into lari, where the income and the instalment are in the same money. An exception applies where the borrower's income is in the currency of the loan, and the framework also reaches guarantors, with carve-outs including legal entities. For most domestic buyers of a normal flat, the practical effect is that the dollar mortgage is simply no longer on the menu.

The threshold has been climbing steadily: 200,000 lari before 2024, raised to 400,000 during 2024, 500,000 from January 2025, 750,000 from August 2025, and a million from July 2026. Read as a series, it is not a reaction to one month's data but a long-running de-dollarisation programme that the central bank says it intends to continue. Anyone planning a purchase two or three years out should assume the line keeps moving upwards rather than that it has settled.

If your income is in the currency you want to borrow in, the restriction is not aimed at you. The more interesting effect is on the people you are bidding against. Local buyers of mid-priced flats are now financing in lari, where borrowing costs are structurally higher than in dollars, which trims how much they can bid for a given monthly payment. That tends to cool price competition at the mainstream end of the market while leaving the upper end, above the threshold and among currency-matched borrowers, largely as it was.

The committee framed the decision around reducing borrowers' exposure to currency risk, said the financial system remains stable and continues to support lending, and pointed to global uncertainty — commodity markets, inflation expectations and financial conditions — as a reason for caution. It also restored the upper limit of temporarily increased reserve requirements on foreign currency liabilities to its previous level and cut it by five percentage points. The combination reads as encouragement of lari lending rather than a squeeze on credit overall, which is the distinction a buyer should care about.