Independence: how we stay on the buyer's side

How we are paid

Our fee for a service is agreed with you in writing before any work starts, and it is shown separately from third-party costs. If anyone other than you would pay us anything in connection with a property we recommend, you learn about it in writing before you decide, and you can ask us to decline it.

What money never buys on avi.ge

• A place in a guide, a comparison or a shortlist.
• A developer profile, a change to a profile, or the removal of a fact from it.
• A project review or a kinder tone in one.
• A star, a rating or a position in a ranking. We publish no ratings without a published methodology.
• Advertising in the guides. There is none.

Developer profiles and project reviews

A developer profile contains facts that can be checked: registration, projects completed and under construction, promised versus actual delivery dates, permits. Each fact has a source. A positive fact and a negative fact need an equally strong source. Project reviews are written only after someone from the team has been on site and photographed the construction with dates. Developers can send a comment on a profile or a review; the comment is published next to the text. The text itself changes only when the developer shows a source.

When our interest and yours could differ

Advice can be bent by three things: a commission that is higher for one property than another, a relationship with a developer, and the wish to close a deal. Our answers: the fee basis is written down before the search begins, any third-party payment is disclosed before you decide, and we put in writing when we think you should not buy. A shortlist that ends with "wait" is a normal outcome.

Conflicts of interest

If a member of the team or a family member owns a unit in a project we review or recommend, the page says so. If we have a business relationship with a developer beyond selling their apartments to our clients, the profile says so.

Your money

We do not hold client funds. The purchase price moves from your bank account to the seller's through a Georgian bank or a notary's deposit, and you see every document before you pay.

How to challenge us

If you think a page, a profile or a recommendation was influenced by money, write to info@avi.ge. You get an answer from the lead adviser, and if you are right the page is corrected and the correction is dated in its change log. The editorial policy describes how corrections work.

How agencies are paid in the Georgian market

To judge our rules you need to know what they are rules against. In Georgia, as in many markets, developers pay a commission to agencies that bring them buyers, and some sellers of resale apartments do the same. A buyer dealing with such an agency often pays the agency nothing directly and may not be told what the developer pays. The arrangement is legal and common, and it has two effects on advice. It makes a project that pays a higher commission more attractive to recommend than one that pays less or none, and it makes a sale more attractive than a recommendation to wait. Neither effect is visible to the buyer unless the agency discloses it. The sections above describe our rules; this section explains why they exist and how they work in practice. Our own policy on accepting developer commissions is the subject of the yellow box above and is published as a draft until the owner confirms it; what follows is how disclosure works whatever that policy turns out to be.

Disclosure in practice

Disclosure is written, specific and early. Written, because a sentence in a phone call is forgotten and a line in a document is not. Specific, because "we may receive a commission" tells you nothing; the disclosure names the project, says who would pay us and on what basis, and says what that means in money or as a share of the price where it is known. Early, because a disclosure made after you have fallen for an apartment is not a disclosure but an excuse; you receive it with the shortlist, before you visit, so that you can weigh it while you still have alternatives. The disclosure also says what you can do about it: you can ask us to decline the payment and to be paid by you instead at the fee basis in your quote, or you can accept the arrangement knowing it exists. Whichever you choose is recorded with the rest of the file.

When we decline a payment

There are cases where disclosure is not enough and the payment is simply refused. We decline any payment that is conditional on a result, such as a bonus for a certain number of sales in a project, because a target changes advice. We decline any payment for publishing, as the section above lists. We decline payments from a developer whose project we have reviewed or profiled unfavourably, so that no one can suggest the text could be bought back. And we decline a payment whenever a client asks us to, in which case the client pays our fee at the basis in their quote and nothing else changes. Declined payments are recorded so that a client can ask what was offered.

Why we publish developer facts while selling their apartments

An agency that sells apartments from developers and publishes facts about the same developers is in an awkward position, and the honest answer is to say so and then to show the rules. The rules are that a profile contains only checkable facts with sources, that positive and negative facts need equally strong sources, that the developer sees the text before publication and may respond, and that no payment changes a word. Under those rules the facts in a profile are the same whether or not we sell that developer's apartments, because the facts come from the registry, the permit records and the delivery dates, not from our relationship. The relationship itself is disclosed on the profile. A reader who still prefers to discount our profiles for that reason is welcome to: every fact carries a source they can check without us.

Keeping the publishing side and the sales side apart

The site and the agency are run by the same people, which is why the separation has to be by rule rather than by organisation chart. The rules are these. The editorial policy, not a sales target, decides what is published and when. Pages are signed by their authors and reviewed by a lawyer or accountant whose review is paid for as review, not as sales. Market figures on the site come from the facts register and are the same figures a client sees in a shortlist. No page may link to a specific project or developer as a recommendation; profiles and reviews link to facts. Sales conversations may refer a client to a page, but a page may not be written to support a sales conversation. And when the two sides conflict, for example when a client is considering a project whose review found problems, the client receives the review, not a softened version of it.

How a shortlist is built so that money cannot bend it

The shortlist is where a hidden commission does its work, because the buyer sees five properties and not the fifty that were left out. Our shortlist is built in a fixed order that leaves a trail. The brief comes first and is approved by the client in writing, so that the criteria exist before any property is considered. The screen is then applied to the whole market that fits the brief, including properties from developers who pay no commission and resale apartments where nobody pays us but the client, and the property adviser visits the candidates before they are shortlisted. Each shortlisted property carries the same note structure, including a line on what is wrong with it, so that a property cannot be flattered by omission. Any third-party payment attached to any property on the list is disclosed on the list itself, next to that property, before the client visits. And the list ends with the adviser's own ranking against the brief, with reasons, so that the client can see whether the ranking follows the brief or follows the money. A client who wants to test this can ask for the screening list, which shows what was considered and why each property was dropped.

Reviews, profiles and the sales floor

The sharpest conflict on this site is between a project review and a sale of the same project, and it is handled by sequence and by signature. A review is written by the property adviser from a visit, signed by them, and published to a fixed structure that cannot omit the risks section; the lead adviser, who negotiates sales, does not edit reviews. A developer profile is compiled by the analyst from the registry, the permit records and the delivery dates, and the lead adviser does not edit profiles either. When a client asks about a project that has a review, the client receives the review as published, and if the review is unfavourable the lead adviser says so rather than steering the conversation to a project without one. If a project is sold to a client before a review exists, that is stated on the review when it is published. The practical effect is that the people who sell cannot change what the people who visit and check have written, and the reader can see who wrote what.

Ten questions to ask any agency, including us

1. Who pays you, and how much, if I buy this property?
2. Will you put that in writing before I decide?
3. Can I pay you a fee instead and have you decline the developer's commission?
4. Where does the purchase price go, and does any of it pass through your account?
5. Will a lawyer who acts for me, not for the seller, read the contract before I sign?
6. Have you ever advised a client not to buy, and can you show me how you put it in writing?
7. Which of the projects you recommend have you visited, and when?
8. Do you publish ratings or rankings of developers, and if so, what is the method?
9. If I find an error in what you told me or published, what happens?
10. Who, by name, is responsible for the advice I am getting?

Our answers to these questions are on this page, the prices and fees page, the services page and the team page. The tenth answer is incomplete until the owner publishes the team's names, and the first is a draft until the owner confirms the commission policy; both are marked on the relevant pages.

What we will publish each year

Once the commission policy is confirmed, this page will carry a short annual statement: whether any developer or seller paid us in the past year, in how many client purchases a third-party payment was disclosed, in how many it was declined at the client's request, how many corrections were made to developer profiles and reviews after a developer's response, and how many were made after a reader's report. The numbers will be small and not very interesting, which is the point: a reader should be able to see that the rules on this page are kept, not only stated.

Frequently asked questions

Do developers pay to be listed on avi.ge?

No. A developer profile cannot be bought, ordered or removed by paying. Profiles contain verifiable facts with sources, and there are no ratings or rankings without a published methodology.

Will you tell me if a property is a bad idea?

Yes. Saying when not to buy is part of the service. The guide on when not to buy in Georgia is written for exactly that reason.

Can a developer respond to a review?

Yes. A developer can send a comment on a project review or a profile, and the comment is published next to the text it refers to. The facts in our text change only if the developer shows a source.

Change log

• 11 October 2026 - Published; commission disclosure to be completed by the owner.