What property insurance costs in Tbilisi
Published starting premiums are low. New Vision quotes apartment cover from 10 GEL a month, TBC Insurance from 12 GEL, IRAO from 20 GEL, and GPI from 25 to 30 GEL depending on which of its two products you take. Annualised, a standard Tbilisi flat with repairs and contents cover usually lands between 150 and 500 GEL a year. A private house, or any policy with a six-figure dollar sum insured, moves into 500 to 1,500 GEL and beyond.
Those entry prices buy small limits. Treat the advertised figure as the floor, then price the policy you actually want. The gap between a 20,000 GEL contents limit and a 60,000 GEL one is where the real money sits.
What you are actually buying
Georgian home policies stack in three layers, and the marketing rarely separates them.
- Structure. The shell. Relevant if you own a house. In an apartment block the load-bearing structure is normally common property, not yours.
- Repairs and fixtures. The remonti: floors, walls, kitchen, bathroom, wiring. TBC Insurance pays this per square metre, up to 300 GEL, which is a useful benchmark for what redoing your own finishing would cost.
- Contents and liability. Furniture, appliances, and the damage you cause to the flat below. The neighbour claim is the one Tbilisi owners actually make.
Ask which layers a quote includes before you compare two numbers.
How to choose
Start from the building, not the brand. If you own a house, you want an insurer that writes structure with a real sum insured. GPI publishes bands from $25,000 to $250,000, and Aldagi settles a total loss at market value with no stated cap. If you own a flat, the renovation limit and the neighbour liability limit are the two lines that matter, and TBC and New Vision both print them.
If you are not in Georgia, weight self-service heavily. IRAO and TBC sell and service policies through their own portals. If you let the property, say so at the point of sale and get a landlord or rental income endorsement written in.
Red flags
- Earthquake missing from the named perils, and nobody willing to confirm in writing whether it is in or out.
- A sum insured picked by the agent rather than from your renovation cost. Underinsurance is normally settled proportionally, so a 50% shortfall can halve an otherwise valid claim.
- No deductible stated on the quote. There is always one.
- A quote on a flat that is still a building site. Aldagi states outright that property under construction or carrying emergency status cannot be insured, and that restriction is common.
- Georgian-only policy conditions with an English sales conversation. Every insurer on this list publishes a conditions document. Ask for it.
When you do not need to pay for this
If you rent your home and own little worth replacing, skip contents cover and buy liability on its own. Prime writes tenant's liability as a named section, and New Vision prices third-party liability from 3 GEL a month. A leak that reaches two floors down costs considerably more than a year of that.
Skip insurance entirely only if you own nothing in the flat and can damage nothing. That describes almost nobody. And if you bought with a mortgage the decision is not really yours, because the lender will require cover for the life of the loan and the only open question is whose policy you use.
Before you buy the property at all, read our guides on property due diligence in Tbilisi and buying an apartment in Tbilisi as a foreigner.
