Tbilisi rent reached $11.3 a metre in September — and two analysts disagree on the yield

4,330 apartments changed hands in Tbilisi in September 2026, 8.0% more than in September 2025, split almost exactly down the middle: 2,163 on the secondary market and 2,167 new-build. The primary half grew 14.5% year on year and the secondary half only 2.1%. Across the first nine months the city registered 35,033 transactions worth $3.2 billion, up 26.3% on the same period of 2025. Average primary-market price reached $1,434 a square metre, up 0.2% on August and 6.7% on a year earlier; the secondary figure, which here means buildings permitted from 2013 onwards, was $1,387, down 0.9% on the month but up 5.9% on the year.

Galt & Taggart reports September rent at $11.3 a square metre for a typical 50 to 60 square metre flat, up 8.6% on August, and a rental yield of 9.4%. TBC Capital, cited in the same article, reports September rent at $10.3, up 1%, and a yield of 8.2% — two tenths of a point lower than a year earlier. Their transaction counts differ too: 4,330 against 4,254, and 35,033 nine-month transactions against 34,434. These are not contradictions so much as different definitions of what counts, and the article does not publish either method. For an owner weighing a rent review, the practical reading is that the gap between the two numbers is about a sixth of the figure, and a yield assumption in a spreadsheet should be chosen with that spread in mind.

TBC Capital's segmentation is the more revealing part of the report. In September, sales of older apartments rose 13% year on year to 3,496 transactions, while sales of new apartments fell 3% to 758 — about 18% of the total. The decline in new-build sales was concentrated, on TBC Capital's reading, in stock priced below $1,500 a square metre. Across nine months the same pattern holds: existing-apartment sales up 23%, new-apartment sales up 3%. Whatever is driving demand in Tbilisi this year, it is not showing up most strongly at the cheaper end of the new-build market.

Permits tell the other half of the story. The area of construction permits issued in September fell 39.6% year on year, to 117,252 square metres across 19 projects, and nine-month permitted living area was down 7.6%. TBC Capital's own permit figure for nine months is a 10% fall to roughly 854,000 square metres, with the drops concentrated in Isani, Gldani and Didi Dighomi, and the largest remaining shares in Nadzaladevi and Didi Dighomi at 17% each and Saburtalo at 15%. Rising sales against falling permits is the arithmetic that eventually pushes prices, and it has now been visible in Tbilisi's monthly data for most of the year.