Tbilisi is selling more flats than ever in 2026. Its rents are falling. Both are true, and the gap is the whole story.

Two numbers from Tbilisi this spring look like they cannot both be true. From January to April 2026, the capital sold roughly 14,200 apartments, up about 16% on the same period last year, for a total of around $1.2 billion, up about 28%. By volume and by money, this is one of the strongest starts Tbilisi has ever recorded.

In the same months, rents went the other way. TBC Capital's monthly tracking shows Tbilisi rental prices down roughly 11% to 12% year on year, with the average asking rent per square metre sliding to around $10.7. As rents fell and prices kept rising, the gross rental yield compressed from above 10% a couple of years ago toward the high single digits, and Global Property Guide now puts Tbilisi's gross yield near 7.4% in early 2026.

A record sales boom and a falling rent are not a contradiction. The gap between them is the most important thing a foreign buyer can understand about Tbilisi right now.

Who is actually buying

Start with the buyers, because the headline hides them. In TBC Capital's surveys, Georgian buyers account for roughly 77% of primary apartment sales in the capital. The largest foreign groups are Israelis at around 10% and Russians at around 3%. Tbilisi is, overwhelmingly, a domestic, end-user market. People are buying flats to live in, to house family, to park savings against the lari, far more than to let to tourists.

That matters because it means the sale boom is not a rental-demand boom. In Batumi, sales and rents are both ultimately bets on the same summer tourist. In Tbilisi, most of the 14,200 buyers this spring never intended to rent the flat out at all. The transaction record is real. It just is not telling you anything reassuring about what your unit would earn on a lease.

Why rents are falling while prices rise

Three forces pull in the same direction here.

Supply is arriving. TBC Capital warns that potential residential supply in the capital "continues to grow, intensifying competition." Years of off-plan selling are now completing into finished keys, and a large share of investor-owned flats land on the long-let and short-let market at the same time. More flats chasing the same renters pushes rent down.

The post-2022 rent spike is unwinding. Tbilisi rents jumped hard in 2022 and 2023 when a wave of relocations arrived. That wave has thinned, and rents are normalising off an inflated peak. A double-digit annual fall sounds alarming; much of it is simply the air leaving a bubble that was never going to hold.

Prices are sticky for a different reason than rents. Sale prices are set by primary developers and by owners who refuse to sell below what they paid, and they are supported by Georgians buying to live, not to yield. So the sale market and the rental market have decoupled. One is held up by end-user demand and developer pricing; the other is being driven down by supply. Yield, which is just rent divided by price, gets squeezed from both ends.

Primary up, secondary down

There is a second split worth knowing. In early 2026 Tbilisi's primary market kept rising while the secondary market softened, even slipping slightly in price. Buyers are chasing new-build, developer stock, while resale flats sit. For an investor this is a quiet warning: the new flat a developer sells you at a primary premium becomes a secondary flat the day you take the keys, and the secondary market is the weaker of the two. The exit is priced lower than the entrance.

What the forecast actually says

For all of 2026, TBC Capital forecasts Tbilisi price growth of only about 3.2%, and Galt & Taggart likewise expects single-digit growth, both citing the growing supply pipeline as the brake. So the honest 2026 picture for Tbilisi is:

Prices rising, but slowly (around 3.2%), not the double-digit runs of the relocation years.
Rents falling (around 11% to 12% off last year).
Yields compressed toward the high-single-digit gross, and lower still once you take out the 5% rental tax, management, agency and void weeks.

Put plainly: the appreciation is modest and the income is shrinking, at the same time. That is a specific, narrow market, not a bad one, and it rewards a specific kind of buyer.

The Dila read

Tbilisi in 2026 is a strong place to buy a home and a demanding place to buy a yield. The thing carrying the market is Georgians buying to live, which is exactly the kind of durable, local demand that makes a market safe to own into. But that same demand is not renting your flat. The income side is being set by a different, softening force entirely.

So the advice splits by why you are buying:

Buying to live in Tbilisi, or to hold a hard asset against your home currency? This is a liquid, functioning, end-user-backed market. Buy the right flat in the right district and you are fine. Yield is not your story.
Buying for rental income? Underwrite the rent that exists today, after the fall, not the 2023 peak a seller will quote you. Start from the gross yield near 7% to 8%, subtract the 5% tax, management and voids, and you are realistically in low-single-digit net. If the flat only works on the old rent, it does not work.
Either way, mind the primary-to-secondary gap. The premium you pay a developer for new stock is not the price you resell at. Stress the exit, not just the brochure.

A record sales quarter is the moment a Tbilisi seller has the most to point at and you have the most reason to ask the second question. The city is selling more flats than ever. Its rents are falling at the same time. A seller will show you the first number. The second one is the one that lands in your bank account.

Sources: TBC Capital, Tbilisi Residential Market Monthly Watch, Galt & Taggart, Tbilisi Residential Real Estate January 2026, GBC: Galt & Taggart predicts single-digit growth in Tbilisi prices in 2026, Global Property Guide, Georgia rental yields. General information, not investment advice. Verify current figures and any specific property with an independent Georgian adviser before committing funds.