Nino Absandze, founder of the Georgian Real Estate Agency (GREA), says that lending to development companies by commercial banks remains difficult.

Speaking on BMG TV’s program “Women’s Narrative,” the founder of GREA—a company managing sales and marketing for development projects—assessed the current situation of lending both to individuals and businesses in the market, noting that access to bank resources is limited for relatively small developers.

“Smaller companies have less access to bank resources. They mainly try to stimulate sales through internal installment plans. If previously you mostly had to cover the full value of the property before completion, today we see cases where you pay 10% when construction begins, 20% upon completion, and 70% at the end. Therefore, development companies themselves are offering flexible conditions to customers, and buyers are increasingly relying less on banks when purchasing apartments,” Absandze explained.

A representative of the real estate market, based on observations of her own company’s projects, stated that today, higher-income individuals are the ones more frequently applying for mortgage loans.

“Today, obtaining a mortgage loan has become more difficult, because to take a loan in US dollars, the loan amount must exceed $750,000; and the significantly increased interest rate for loans in GEL naturally has an even greater impact on the already rising real estate prices. As a result, higher-income clients are the ones who apply to banks for mortgage loans,” said Nino Absandze.

Source: www.bm.ge