In Tbilisi's heritage zones, the 90-day route for unpermitted work now stops at 10 square metres

The underlying rule is a grace period rather than an amnesty. Someone who built without the required permit, or carried on after a permit expired, in a Tbilisi cultural heritage site or a heritage protection zone gets 90 days to obtain the consent or permit they should have had, or to put the violation right. It is a route back into compliance with a clock attached, and it exists because the alternative in a heritage zone is demolition or an unsellable property. What Parliament has now done is define which cases that route is available for, which is a narrower question than whether the route exists.

The amendments state that the Code's special procedure applies to research and rehabilitation work on immovable cultural heritage monuments; to Class I construction work within cultural heritage protection zones; and to unauthorised construction only where the new building area, or the additional area added to an existing building, is 10 square metres or less. That last clause is the operative one for most private owners. An enclosed balcony, a small rear extension, a converted storage space: whether it falls inside or outside 10 square metres now decides whether the 90-day route is open to you at all.

The draft also creates an exception to the 10-square-metre limit: for replacing buildings and structures that are unsafe or structurally hazardous, and for urban development measures, where Tbilisi City Hall or a municipal legal entity is carrying out the work. That is a public-sector carve-out, not a private one. It is worth reading carefully if you own in a block where the municipality is planning works, because the procedure that applies to a city project replacing a dangerous structure is not the procedure that applies to you adding a room to it.

If you are buying in Sololaki, Mtatsminda, Chugureti, Avlabari or anywhere else inside a protection zone, the measured area of the flat is not the only number that matters. Ask whether anything in it was added without a permit, and how large that addition is, because the answer now determines which procedure the owner can use to put it right. A flat with a nine-square-metre enclosed balcony and a flat with a twenty-square-metre one are, on these amendments, in different legal positions. That is a question for a lawyer and the registry rather than for the seller, and it is cheaper to ask before the deposit than after.