Tbilisi Downtown, Avlabari

Tbilisi Downtown plants the Next name in Avlabari, the historic district on the high left bank of the Mtkvari that looks across the river to the Old Town. It is one of the capital’s most characterful quarters — a tangle of old streets, churches and viewpoints that has drawn a wave of restoration and new building as Tbilisi’s centre of gravity has shifted back toward its core.

The location is the case in itself. Avlabari sits a short walk from the Old Town, the sulphur baths and the Rike Park cable car, on a metro line that links it directly to the rest of the city — the kind of central, well-connected address that holds its value and stays rentable through the year rather than only in season.

The mix here skips the studio tier entirely and opens at one-bedroom apartments of 58 to 73 square metres, climbing through two-bedroom homes into the high hundreds and topping out with three-bedroom layouts of up to 145 square metres. Homes are handed over as a White Box shell ready to fit out, with generous 3.3-metre ceilings; turnkey and renovation finishing packages are available as paid upgrades, and parking across blocks A, B and C is offered from $20,000. Construction is already underway, with handover scheduled for 2028.

Georgia imposes no restriction on foreign freehold ownership, so an overseas buyer holds an apartment here on exactly the same terms as a Georgian national. Pricing runs from $165,000 for a one-bedroom to $413,700 for the largest three-bedroom home. A representative structure is 30% down on signing, the 70% balance carried interest-free across a 27-month instalment run of roughly $4,278 a month, with the remainder due on handover.

Tbilisi Downtown is NEXT’s first branded residence in the Georgian capital, set at Aleksandre Tsurtsumia Street 12 in the heart of Avlabari. The scheme was approved by the Architectural-Historical Council of Tbilisi City Hall and conceived as a low-rise residence that keeps faith with the scale and character of Old Tbilisi rather than overwriting it — landscaped courtyards, open squares, a lush garden and children’s play areas are woven between the blocks to give the development a quiet, green core a few minutes’ walk from the Holy Trinity Cathedral, the sulphur baths, the Bridge of Peace and Rike Park.

The shared amenities run well beyond the residential floors: an indoor swimming pool, a restaurant, a gym and spa, a business lounge, a library and a generously sized lobby, alongside recreational and communal spaces throughout the grounds. Day-to-day operation is handled in-house by NEXT’s own property-management team, which provides reception, 24/7 concierge and security, room and laundry service and valet parking — a hospitality layer that lets owners lock up and leave while their apartment is maintained and, if they choose, let to guests.

Return on investment: NEXT’s in-house rental programme underpins the developer’s projections, which model income net of a 40% brand-management fee, an annual service charge and tax. Across the four sample units in its analysis, the ten-year average return runs from about 10.5% a year on a 115.2 m² two-bedroom (bought at $320,256, a cumulative $321,689 or roughly 100% of price) to around 12.4% on a 44.5 m² one-bedroom ($126,825, cumulative $149,206 or about 118% of price), with a 66.7 m² one-bedroom at roughly 11.4% ($208,504 cumulative, 109% payback) and a 37 m² studio at about 11.9% ($131,712 cumulative, 114% payback). Net yields open in the 5.6–6.4% range in the first full year and climb into the low-to-mid teens as the building matures, as forecast occupancy rises from around 58–62% at opening in 2027 to the low-to-mid 90s by the mid-2030s and the average daily rate steps up year on year. These are the developer’s projections rather than guaranteed figures, and actual returns will depend on room rates and occupancy.