Tbilisi permitted half as much new floor area while selling 17% more flats

Permits are the earliest readable signal of what will be on the market later, which is exactly why they are easy to misread now. Fewer approvals in early 2026 does not reduce the number of flats being handed over this year, because those were permitted in 2023 and 2024. It changes what is available in 2028 and 2029. An owner thinking of selling in the near term is unaffected by this; an owner planning to sell at the end of the decade is looking at the first evidence that they may face less new competition when they do.

In February, secondary market sales were up 19.2% and primary market sales 11.2% on the year, with a developer survey putting primary demand up 26.6%. The research itself attributes much of that to a low base in the same months of the previous year, when political instability weighed on activity. That caveat is doing real work: a percentage increase measured against a disrupted period describes a return to normal rather than a boom, and anyone quoting the 26.6% without the base attached is overstating what happened.

February's figure was ten residential projects. At that volume a single large tower being approved in March rather than February swings the monthly series substantially, which is why a one-month fall means little and a fifth consecutive one is worth noticing. The useful read is the two-month cumulative: 50.7% less permitted living area than the same period a year earlier. That is a big enough gap not to be explained by the timing of one or two approvals, and it is the figure to watch rather than any individual month.

For a developer, a contracting approvals pipeline alongside rising transaction counts is the combination that usually precedes firmer prices on completed stock, and it raises the value of land already permitted. For a buyer, it is a reason to ask when a building under offer was permitted and when it is actually due, because a thinner pipeline tends to come with longer delivery times and more projects selling off-plan against distant completion dates. The deposit terms and the penalty for late delivery matter more in that environment than the brochure does.