An apartment in Georgia or a savings account: what the same money earns in 10 years

Published October 15, 2026 · Fact-checked: October 27, 2026 · 5 min read · Levelvale · Methodology

Deal Breakdown · a 4-minute read

The terms of the comparison

A worked-example apartment in Georgia: price $60,000, rent $450 a month, long-term rental. There is a tenant from day one, the tenant changes every 2 years, and each change costs two vacant months and an agent fee. No mortgage. By default the calculator adds $1,200 of purchase costs to the price, so the amount invested is $61,200. Renovation and furniture are not in that sum: we covered how to account for them in “An apartment in Georgia: the full cost before the first rent”.

By default, the apartment's price does not grow. You can enter your own growth rate in the full analysis. The Levelvale calculator produced the result below on October 26, 2026, in today's money: after taxes, exchange rates and inflation of 3.1% a year. This is a calculation, not a forecast.

The result

What makes up the apartment's result

• The first year. Rent of $5,400, or $5,238 in today's money. Out of it come the agent fee of $436, running costs of $989 (repair reserve, property tax at 0.8%, insurance) and rental income tax of $262. That leaves you $3,550.
• The following years. The tenant changes every 2 years, and each change costs two vacant months and another agent fee. Rent grows 1.6% a year, inflation is 3.1%.
• Minus $1,200 of purchase costs. You still own the apartment, valued at its purchase price of $60,000.

If you sell after 10 years at the same price, you are left with about $8,603 on top of the money invested: selling costs come out, along with six months of running costs while the apartment is on the market.

What price growth decides

The Credo Bank deposit pays 10.05% a year in lari. Converted to dollars using the exchange rate history, that is about 8.3% a year, or 5.1% after inflation. Sold after 10 years with no price growth, the apartment returns 1.6% a year in today's money. Its annual yield matches the deposit if its price grows 4.8% a year or more. At 4.4% a year, the price growth in Tbilisi from 2016 to 2025 according to the calculator's data, the apartment with a sale would return 4.8% a year. That is the past, not a forecast.

Annual yield is the fairer measure here than the totals in the table: the deposit pays interest every year, while the apartment's price growth arrives as one sum at the end, and 10-year totals ignore when the money comes in.

So the main conclusion: with no price growth, the apartment falls behind the lari deposit. At about 5% growth a year, the two yields come out roughly even. Anything above that depends on the market, and no one can promise price growth.

How an apartment differs from a savings account, beyond the number

• Work. A savings account needs no tenants, repairs or agents. An apartment does, even with a property manager.
• Liquidity. You can withdraw a savings account in days. An apartment takes months to sell, often with haggling.
• Concentration. $60,000 in one apartment depends on one building, one neighborhood and one tenant.
• Currency. A lari deposit is worth in dollars whatever the exchange rate allows. The 8.3% in dollars comes from past exchange rates, and future rates may differ. The calculator shows which period of exchange rate history it uses.

The index fund tops the table, but its 10% a year (6.2% in today's money) is the average for 1928 to 2025, with the money left untouched. In its worst decade, 2000 to 2009, it returned about −1% a year.

How to compare your own option

1. Take the price from the contract and the rent from similar apartments that have actually rented.
2. Look at the apartment's result with no price growth. If that result works for you, your decision stands on solid ground.
3. See how much price growth it takes to match the deposit, and ask yourself how confident you are in it.
4. Compare in one currency: the calculator converts the lari deposit to dollars and shows the exchange rate next to it.

The scenario below: long-term rental, price $60,000, rent $450 a month, a tenant from day one, a new tenant every 2 years, with 2 vacant months and an agent fee at each change. The comparison with a savings account, bonds and an index fund sits under the result.

Questions and answers

Why is the savings account in lari? For Georgia, the calculator uses a Credo Bank lari deposit at 10.05% a year by default. To compare in one currency, it converts the deposit to dollars using the exchange rate history. The exchange rate can change, and that is the deposit's risk.

Are my taxes in my country of residence included? No, this table only includes taxes in Georgia. Tax in your country of residence is added in the full analysis.

Can I set my own price growth? Yes. By default, price growth is zero. Enter your own rate in the full analysis, and the calculator shows how much growth the apartment needs to match the deposit.

This is a worked example. The results were produced in the Levelvale calculator on October 26, 2026 and are not a forecast. This is not investment, tax or legal advice.

Figures recalculated on October 27, 2026 with the Levelvale calculator, in today's money.

REAL ESTATE I YIELD I TAXES · Levelvale

This is a calculation, not investment, tax or legal advice.

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