Georgia's Economy Grew 6.9% in the Second Quarter While Construction Shrank
Georgian GDP rose 6.9% in the second quarter of 2026, but construction output came in at -4.8% even as real estate activities, 9.1% of the economy, grew 4.9%.
Georgia's real gross domestic product grew 6.9% year on year in the second quarter of 2026, Geostat reported on 18 September. Nominal output reached 28,147.0 million lari and the deflator came in at 3.0%. Inside that expansion, one sector moved the other way: construction output came in at -4.8%.
The sector that builds is shrinking, the sector that uses buildings is not
Construction accounts for 6.5% of Georgian GDP and was the clearest negative contributor in the quarter. Real estate activities, at 9.1% of GDP, is the second-largest activity in the economy after wholesale and retail trade, and it grew 4.9%.
That divergence is the substance of the release for anyone watching Georgian property. Transactions, letting and management are expanding while the pipeline that replenishes the stock is contracting. Around them, transport and storage grew 19.8%, information and communication 16.6%, wholesale and retail trade 8.0% at 14.9% of GDP, and manufacturing 7.3% at 8.9%. Construction is alone on the negative side of a broadly strong quarter.
Geostat notes that revised figures are due on 13 November 2026, so these are first estimates and may move.
Why our Georgia row shows no national price
Glopra's Georgia country row carries no price per square metre and no rent, and the reason is published rather than hidden. Geostat's residential property price index covers only newly built housing in Tbilisi and is released as an index on a 2020 base, never as a price level. An index without an anchor cannot be turned into a price. Rather than estimate one, we leave the national fields empty and put the actual price series on the city rows.
What the city rows show
Tbilisi carries an average asking sale price of 1,341 dollars per square metre against an asking rent of 10.10 dollars per square metre a month, from TBC Capital's Tbilisi Residential Market Monthly Watch for March 2026. That pairing gives a gross yield of 9.04%, and because Georgia taxes non-resident rental income at just 5%, the net figure is 8.59% — among the narrowest gaps between gross and net anywhere we cover, in the landlord's favour. Round-trip transaction costs are 4.9%. Tbilisi prices rose 4.9% in lari and 8.3% in dollars over twelve months, and our bubble score of 36 keeps the city in the moderate band.
Batumi is the more curious row: 1,450 dollars per square metre, higher than the capital, against the same 10.10 dollars of monthly rent, which pulls the gross yield down to 8.36%. A Black Sea resort city priced above the capital while letting for the same money is a coastal-premium pattern, not a rental-income one. One honest caveat: the Batumi figures come from Galt and Taggart for December 2025 and the Tbilisi figures from TBC Capital for March 2026, so the two cities are not measured by the same publisher on the same date.
One last piece of arithmetic of our own. Georgian GDP per capita for the quarter was 7,141.9 lari, or 2,667.4 dollars. At the Tbilisi price, a quarter of national output per person buys just under two square metres of the capital.
Sources: National Statistics Office of Georgia (Geostat), Gross Domestic Product of Georgia, II Quarter 2026, published 18 September 2026 https://geostat.ge/media/82779/Gross-Domestic-Product-of-Georgia---II-Quarter%2C-2026.pdf; National Statistics Office of Georgia (Geostat), news item on the second-quarter national accounts https://www.geostat.ge/en/single-news/3852