The average mortgage is now 99,600 lari, and the rate 11.88%

Thirty-four per cent more money across only twenty per cent more loans means the average borrower is taking on a larger debt, and the average loan figure confirms it: roughly ten thousand lari more than a year earlier. Two things produce that pattern. Prices rise, so the same flat needs a bigger loan; or the mix shifts, and the buyers borrowing are buying larger or better property. Both are consistent with the price data, and neither is the same as more households becoming able to buy, which is what the twenty per cent figure measures and which grew far more slowly.

Down a point and a half over the year is a real improvement, and it is still a high nominal rate by the standards of the countries most foreign buyers come from. At close to twelve per cent in lari, the interest on a twenty-year loan dwarfs the principal, which is why so much of the foreign purchasing here is done in cash and why the market's sensitivity to local rates is smaller than the lending figures alone suggest. The corollary matters for sellers: a falling rate widens the pool of local buyers at the middle of the market faster than it changes anything at the top.

Mortgage growth of this size is a demand signal for sale prices and, indirectly, a supply signal for rents: every household that buys is a household that stops renting. In a city adding tens of thousands of finished flats, the two forces work against each other, and which one wins in a given building depends on whether its units are bought to live in or bought to let. An owner deciding between selling and holding should look at who is viewing: a run of owner-occupier viewings in a building is a better reason to sell into this lending cycle than any national figure.