Who this is
The partner lawyer is an independent Georgian lawyer who works with AVI Estates in two roles. For clients, they check the Public Registry extract, any encumbrances, the permits held by the developer and the contract before anything is signed, and they prepare powers of attorney for remote purchases. For avi.ge, they review every page about property law, residence permits and tax law before it is considered final. A page in those sections shows a visible "being reviewed" notice until this review is done, and the reviewer's name appears in the byline once it is.
To be added by the team: full name, photo, Georgian Bar Association membership or licence details, law firm, areas of practice, years of experience, languages spoken.
What this reviewer checks
Legal pages in the Buying & law section, the whole Residency section, the tax-law parts of Invest & money, and the site's own legal pages: privacy policy, terms of use, cookie policy and disclaimer. The reviewer does not write marketing text and does not review market or price pages.
How a review works
Law as it stands
Each legal statement is checked against the current text on the Legislative Herald of Georgia or the official page of the authority concerned, not against secondary summaries.
Procedure as it is applied
Where practice at the Public Registry, the Public Service Hall or the Revenue Service differs from the letter of the rule, the page says so.
Written sign-off
The reviewer confirms the page in writing; only then is the review notice removed and the reviewer named in the byline and the page's structured data.
Re-review on change
When a law or threshold changes, the affected pages return to review and the notice reappears until they are confirmed again.
Independence of the review
The reviewer is not an employee of AVI Estates and is paid for review work, not for outcomes. A review can and does send a page back for correction. Nothing on avi.ge is legal advice for an individual case; the reviewer's role is to make the general information correct, as described in the editorial policy.
Pages under this reviewer's care
Legal and residency guides are added here as they are published and reviewed.
Contact
Legal questions about a specific purchase are handled through AVI Estates: WhatsApp or info@avi.ge. Corrections to a reviewed page: report an error.
What the legal check covers, item by item
The registry extract
Ordered for the property's cadastral code: who the registered owner is, what the registered area and type are, whether the ownership is shared, and what encumbrances are recorded, such as a mortgage, a seizure or a tax lien. The extract is read line by line and compared with the listing and with what the seller said.
The seller's identity and authority
Whether the person selling is the registered owner, and if not, whether their power of attorney is current, notarised, specific to this property and sufficient for a sale. Company sellers are checked in the registry of legal entities for who may sign.
The history
How the property came to the seller and whether anything in that chain, such as an unresolved inheritance or a recent transfer at an odd price, has to be explained before a buyer can rely on the title.
For a new build: the developer's paper
The developer's rights to the land, the construction permit and whether it matches the building being sold in plot, use and number of floors, the permit's status, and any pledge of the land to a bank.
The contract
The reservation agreement, the preliminary agreement or the sale contract, read in Georgian against the translation, for price and payment terms, delivery date and penalty, specification, area tolerance, change procedure, refund conditions and the clauses that are missing.
The land category
For houses and plots, whether the land is agricultural, which a foreigner cannot own and which does not count towards a residence permit threshold.
The written summary
The findings, the fixes needed before anyone signs, and the lawyer's own answer on whether they would sign, written in the client's language for the client's advisers to use.
Problems the lawyer finds most often
- A mortgage on the apartment that the seller intended to clear from the purchase price without saying so; it can be done safely, but only with the bank in the sequence.
- A power of attorney that is too wide or too old, giving a representative powers over all the owner's property, or issued years ago to someone the owner no longer trusts.
- A permit for fewer floors than the brochure, which means the upper apartments being sold do not legally exist yet.
- A reservation agreement with no refund clause, presented as a formality and functioning as a forfeit.
- A delivery date with no penalty, or a penalty capped at an amount that makes it meaningless.
- A specification that names no materials, so that "white frame" means whatever the developer delivers.
- A shared ownership where one co-owner is selling without the other's consent, or where a spouse's consent is required and absent.
- An agricultural plot under a house, discovered after the buyer has fallen for the view.
None of these is unusual, and most can be resolved before signing once they are known. The point of the check is that they are known before money moves, not after.
The lawyer's role in a remote purchase
When the buyer is abroad, the lawyer's role grows, because the lawyer is the person physically present at every step that the buyer would otherwise attend. The lawyer drafts the power of attorney so that it names the property by cadastral code, limits the representative to this transaction and states precisely whether the representative may pay or receive money; advises on how it is to be notarised and legalised in the buyer's country; checks the translation; attends the signing and confirms that the document signed is the document the buyer approved; and follows the registration until the extract in the buyer's name is issued. At each step the buyer receives a scan before and after. The lawyer does not hold the buyer's money and does not pay the seller; payment moves between banks, with the lawyer confirming that the conditions for payment have been met.
How a page review is done
Reviewing a page on this site is a different job from checking a client's deal, and it is done differently. The lawyer receives the page with its facts register entries and the sources cited. Each legal statement is traced to the current text as published on the Legislative Herald of Georgia, or to the authority's own official page, not to the secondary sources the page may also cite; where the page relies on a secondary report because the primary text has not yet been located, the review either finds the text or marks the statement as pending. Each procedural statement is compared with current practice at the registry, the Public Service Hall or the Revenue Service, and where practice differs from the letter of the rule, the page is amended to say so. Thresholds, dates and article references are checked character by character. The review ends with a written confirmation, dated, after which the notice is removed and the reviewer is named in the byline and the page's structured data; or with a list of corrections, after which the page is revised and reviewed again. A page returns to review whenever the rule it describes changes.
What the lawyer does not do
The lawyer acts for clients of the agency on their purchases and reviews the site's legal content; the lawyer does not give legal advice to readers of the site who are not clients, does not answer questions about a reader's specific contract through the contact form, and does not act for a seller or a developer in a transaction where the agency's client is the buyer. The lawyer does not advise on the law of the buyer's home country, including its tax law; the country guides say so on every page. The lawyer does not value property, which is the accredited appraiser's role, and does not express a view on whether a purchase is a good investment. Within those limits the lawyer's summary is the single most important document a client receives before signing, and a client who disagrees with it is free to take it to another lawyer for a second opinion, which the summary is written to allow.
How to judge any lawyer's check, including this one
- Did the lawyer order and read the registry extract for the cadastral code, or rely on a copy the seller supplied?
- Does the summary name the encumbrances found, or only say that the title is "clean"?
- For a new build, did the lawyer see the permit and compare it with the building being sold?
- Did the lawyer read the Georgian text of the contract, or only the translation?
- Does the summary list the clauses that are missing, not only the ones that are wrong?
- Does the summary say in plain words whether the lawyer would sign?
- Is the lawyer acting only for you in this deal?
A summary that answers all seven is a summary you can act on. Ours is written to answer them in order.
After the summary: fixing what was found
A summary that lists problems is the beginning of the lawyer's useful work, not the end. Against each item the summary records if a fix is possible, who has to make it and the step it must precede: a mortgage cleared by the seller's bank at the signing with the payment routed through it; a power of attorney re-issued with the right scope before the deal continues; a missing penalty clause negotiated into the developer's contract by the founder with the lawyer's wording; a spouse's consent obtained and notarised. The lawyer then confirms that each fix has actually happened, by seeing the document, before telling the client that the condition for the next step is met. An unfixable problem, for example a house standing on agricultural land or a permit that will not be amended, ends the purchase, and the summary says so plainly so that the client does not spend another week hoping.
Documents the lawyer prepares
Besides reading documents, the lawyer drafts the ones a buyer needs and a seller or developer does not supply. The power of attorney for a remote purchase, drafted narrowly and in a form acceptable both to a Georgian notary and to the Public Registry. The protective clauses for a developer's contract, proposed as wording rather than as objections, so that the negotiation has a text to work from. The reservation agreement's refund clause, when the seller's version has none. The written consent of a co-owner or a spouse where the registry requires it. A short memorandum for the buyer's own lawyer or bank at home, explaining what a Georgian registry extract is and what the Georgian contract provides, in terms a foreign professional will recognise. Each of these is drafted in Georgian with a translation for the client, and each is kept in the client's file with the signed version.
Keeping the law current
The rules that matter most to foreign buyers have changed recently and will change again: the property-based residence permit threshold rose from $100,000 to $150,000 on 1 March 2026, work permits became mandatory for foreign employees on the same date, and a three-year IT residence permit was introduced in September 2025. The lawyer follows the Legislative Herald of Georgia and the announcements of the Public Service Hall and the Public Registry, confirms each change from the primary text rather than from reports of it, and tells the team what the change means for current purchases and for the pages of this site. The affected pages return to review with a visible notice until the lawyer confirms the new text, and clients in the middle of a purchase are told in writing how the change affects them, including when it does not.
Working with the partner lawyer
Clients do not usually deal with the lawyer directly; the legal check and the purchase support are ordered through the agency, quoted in writing on the prices and fees page, and the summary arrives through the client's contact person in the client's language. Clients who want to speak to the lawyer, or whose own lawyer at home wants to, can do so by arrangement, and the summary is written so that another lawyer can follow it. The lawyer's name, bar membership or licence details, firm and languages will be published in the yellow box at the top of this page as soon as the owner supplies them, at which point the review notices on the pages the lawyer has confirmed will be replaced by the lawyer's name in the byline. Until then, every legal page on this site carries the notice, which is the honest state of affairs.
Change log
- - Profile page created with role description; name, licence details and photo to be added by the owner.