Tbilisi Hills: what a golf course does for property on the hills above Tbilisi

How is the district laid out?

As a single community on an area of hundreds of hectares in the hills above the city. Its core is a championship-format golf course, with plots for villas, completed houses, townhouses and low-rise apartments arranged around it.

Club facilities, restaurants and a hotel component complete the picture, as they do in resort districts elsewhere.

The key advantage of the site is height combined with closeness. The district sits roughly a few hundred metres above the centre of Tbilisi, which gives cleaner air, cooler summers and panoramic views of the city and the Caucasus range.

The road to the centre usually takes twenty to thirty minutes by car — a rare balance of seclusion and access.

Why is this a new format for Georgia?

Because most buyers associate property in Tbilisi with flats in Vake, Saburtalo or the old town. Master-planned districts on the hills around the city are a different format, and Tbilisi Hills is the best known of them.

In Dubai or Cyprus a golf community has long been an established class of property, with a premium that everyone understands. In Georgia this project is in effect forming the market from nothing.

That creates an interesting position for a buyer. A product at the level of international resort districts is sold at prices that would look symbolic on a mature market.

Plot, finished house or apartment?

The project offers several ways in. The most flexible is a plot, on which the owner builds to a design of their own within the district’s architectural regulations.

A plot has the lowest threshold of entry and the greatest freedom, and a building horizon measured in years. It needs time and supervision of the construction.

For those who do not want to build there are completed villas and townhouses from the developer. That means moving in without waiting and a predictable quality, at a higher price and with no construction risk.

Smaller apartments are the compromise for investors focused on letting and on growth in value, and for seasonal use.

The building regulations are an important part of the value. They protect the views, the density and the single look of the district — something the unplanned country building around Tbilisi lacks.

What does a golf course do for values?

In projects of this kind the course is an economic mechanism and not decoration. It creates a constant flow of well-off guests, sustains club life and produces the premium for the first line on the fairway known from markets worldwide.

In established golf communities, property with a view of the course is as a rule dearer than comparable property without one by tens of per cent.

For Georgia it is a tourism argument as well. The country has only a handful of full golf courses, so the district draws players from across the region.

That includes guests from the Gulf states, where summer heat makes the game uncomfortable. The sporting infrastructure turns the district from a dormitory suburb into a destination in its own right.