Developer registry: who builds in Georgia

What a developer profile is for

Foreign buyers in Georgia overwhelmingly buy from developers, often before the building is finished, and the single most important decision in such a purchase is the choice of counterparty. Yet the information available about developers is almost entirely produced by the developers themselves: renders, brochures, showrooms and sales staff. The developer registry exists to put a second kind of information next to the first: the company's registration, the record of its completed projects, the dates it promised against the dates it delivered, and the state of its permits, all with sources, so that a buyer can judge the promise by the record.

What every profile contains

Rules we apply to every profile

1. Verifiable facts only

   A statement enters a profile only with a source a reader can open: the company registry, the Public Registry, the permit database, the developer's own published material, a contract we have seen, or a dated photograph by our team. Opinions, rumours and anonymous accounts do not enter.

2. Equal standards for good and bad

   A positive fact needs the same strength of source as a negative one. "Delivered on time" needs the promised date and the actual date just as "delivered late" does. We do not print praise on weaker evidence than criticism.

3. No ratings, no rankings

   There are no stars, scores or "top ten" lists. A ranking needs a published method and weights; without them it is an opinion dressed as data. If we ever publish a comparison, the method is published first.

4. No paid placement

   No developer pays for a profile, for its content or for its position in the list. Profiles are written in the order of market size and reader interest. How we are paid is explained on the independence page, including the commissions developers pay agencies.

5. Right of reply

   Developers see the profile before it goes live and can respond. The response is published alongside, with its date, and a factual correction supported by a source changes the profile; a disagreement without a source is published as the developer's view.

6. Dated and re-checked

   Every profile shows when it was last checked. Delivery records are updated when a project completes, permits are re-checked when a project advances, and the change log records every edit.

How to verify a developer yourself

Everything in a profile can be repeated by a buyer, and the second group of pages in this section exists to show how. The company's registration and its officers are public in the Georgian registry of legal entities. Land ownership and any encumbrances on the plot are in the Public Registry extract for the cadastral code of the site, which anyone can order. Construction permits are issued by the municipality and can be checked by class and by project; the guide on permits shows where, and what a permit for a different number of floors than the one advertised looks like. Completed projects can be visited: their entrances, lifts and common areas tell you more about a developer's standards than any showroom. Delivery dates can be compared with the developer's own earlier marketing, which is often still online. The twenty-question guide walks through all of this in the order a buyer would do it, and the profiles record what we found when we did.

The twenty questions, in five groups

The checklist that the profiles answer, and that the twenty-question guide explains, falls into five groups. The first is identity: who exactly is the company you would contract with, is it the same entity that owns the land and holds the permit, and who stands behind it. A brand name on a billboard and the legal entity on your contract are often different, and only the second one matters. The second is the record: what has this company finished, where, how late, and what do those buildings look like today. The third is this project's paper: land rights, the permit and its match to the building being sold, the status of any encumbrance on the plot, and whether the plot is pledged to a bank. The fourth is money: how the project is financed, how much is pre-sold, whether buyers' payments are protected in any way, and what the instalment terms really cost. The fifth is the contract and the handover: delivery date and penalty, specification, area tolerance, change procedure, defects process and what happens if construction stops. A profile records the answers we found for the first three groups, which are matters of public record; the fourth and fifth depend on the specific project and contract and are the subject of the project reviews and of the legal check we do for clients.

About the names in the list above

The list of developers at the top of this page is the order in which we intend to write profiles, chosen by the size of their presence in Tbilisi and Batumi and by how often readers ask about them. Appearing on the list is not an endorsement and not a warning; it is a statement that the company is large enough or asked about often enough that buyers need checkable facts about it. Not appearing means only that we have not reached it yet. If you are considering a developer that has no profile here, the twenty-question guide lets you run the check yourself, and our legal check service runs it for clients before they pay a deposit.

Why delivery records matter more than renders

A render shows what a developer intends; a delivery record shows what it does. Delays in Georgian construction are common enough that the question is not whether a project will be late but how late and how the contract treats it. A developer whose last three buildings were handed over within a few months of the promised date is a different counterparty from one whose last three were years late, even if both have beautiful renders and both are selling today. The delivery table in each profile is therefore the first thing we fill in and the first thing we suggest a buyer reads. It is also the part of the profile most likely to draw a response from the developer, which is why the right of reply exists and why both dates carry a source. The statistics page in this section will collect delays across developers once enough profiles exist to say something general; until then, the profiles speak one developer at a time.

How this section is organised

The first group is the planned profiles; the second is the method, shared with the New builds section, which explains frames, stages, contracts and handover. Reviews of individual projects, written after a site visit, are in Project reviews and link to the developer's profile. The legal side of a contract with a developer is in Buying & law. If you have documents, dates or photographs about a developer's project, delivered or delayed, send them through the contact page; material that can be verified goes into the profile with its source, and material that cannot does not.