The cheap square metre

Published October 8, 2026 · Figures checked: October 8, 2026 · 3 min read

Straight Talk from a Realtor · a 2-minute read

Buyers love one number: the price per square metre. They compare it, circle it in listings and send it to friends: "Look, only $1,250 per metre, and next door they want $1,750!" Everybody understands a metre.

But an apartment pays you in rent, not in metres. So the thing to compare is not the price of a metre but what a metre earns. Let me show you on two real listings from Batumi, both taken from korter.ge on 7 October 2026.

The studio. 31 m², building completed, furnished. Price $55,000, which is $1,774 per metre. You can rent it out tomorrow.

The two-room apartment. 55.9 m², building still under construction, completion at the end of 2026, delivered in shell condition. Price $69,900, which is $1,250 per metre, almost 30% cheaper. On paper the choice is obvious.

Now we calculate instead of comparing price tags.

Step one: how much you really invest. Shell condition means walls and windows. You cannot live in it. Finishing in Batumi costs from $150 per metre, and on 55.9 m² that is about $8,400. Furniture and appliances for a two-room apartment come to roughly $6,000. Title registration is $55. So you invest not $69,900 but $84,340. Divide by 55.9 m² and the metre now costs $1,509. The gap to the studio has shrunk from 30% to 15%.

Step two: how much the apartment brings in. We looked at 20 long-term rental listings in Batumi on the same korter.ge. Two-room apartments ask from $600 to $700 a month, so we take the middle: $650. Studios of this size rent from $400 to $550, so we take $450.

Step three: when it starts bringing anything in. The studio can be rented out at once. The two-room apartment first has to be finished by the developer, then you do the fit-out, and only then does a tenant move in. We allowed six months. That is an assumption, and a soft one: buildings in Batumi are often handed over late. Six months without a tenant at $650 a month equals $3,900, which the studio earns in that time and the two-room apartment does not.

Step four: the result over 10 years. Levelvale calculated both apartments under the same rules: one empty month a year, an agent for every new tenant, 5% tax on rent, repairs, building fees.

The cheapest metre in the set earned the least. Not because the two-room apartment is bad. Its entry cost is 21% higher and its first money arrives six months later. Those two lines ate the whole difference in the price per metre.

So here is a simple rule. Price per metre tells you how much you will pay. Yield tells you how much you will get. The seller writes the first number in the listing. The second one you have to calculate yourself.

All three apartments stage by stage (purchase, ownership, rental, sale): A "10% yield" apartment in Batumi: three real listings

Run the numbers before you sign. Enter your own price, finishing cost and rent into the calculator and see what is left net to you.

REAL ESTATE I YIELD I TAXES · Levelvale

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

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