For immigrants, an apartment can be purchased with a mortgage - SEB's decision

For those who earn their income abroad, the initial down payment when taking out a mortgage loan will be reduced from 30% to 20% - the National Bank of Georgia made the relevant decision today and it is aimed at encouraging the real estate sector in the country.

For those who have income in Georgia, the initial down payment when taking out a mortgage will be reduced from the previous 15% to 10%. The NBG also made this decision today.

According to Davit Utiashvili, Head of the Financial Stability Department of the National Bank, in January 2025, the mortgage lending rate fell below 10% per annum, in response to which the National Bank decided to ease the regulation. According to Davit Utiashvili, this decision will encourage mortgage lending.

"The growth of mortgage loans was relatively weak and was less than 10% annually in January. We also assessed that in response to the normalization of GDP growth in the real estate market, the Financial Stability Committee decided to increase one of our instruments, which is the loan collateral ratio, from 85% to 90%. This means that when taking out a loan, the consumer will have to put down 10% of the apartment value himself and borrow 90%, compared to 15% and 85% from a bank loan. We believe that this will contribute to the sustainable activity of the real estate market and increase the availability of loans for the population," - notes Utiashvili.

According to the National Bank of Georgia statistics, in January 2025, Georgian banks issued a total of 246 million GEL in mortgage loans, which is only 4 million GEL or 2% more than the previous year. As for the number of agreements, the number of mortgages issued in January was only 3 thousand, for comparison, the number of mortgage loans issued in January 2024 was 3.3 thousand.

According to the NBG, as of January 2025, the rate of GEL mortgage loans is 11.79%, which is a decrease of 0.43 percentage points annually.

According to Colliers Georgia’s assessment of the residential real estate market, a total of 2,892 transactions were recorded in Tbilisi in January 2025, which is a decrease of 7.5% annually. However, the value of real estate sold was $208 million, an annual increase of 2.9%, which in turn is related to the increase in real estate prices.