Rental building construction in Batumi

We take on rental building construction in Batumi under a construction contract, on the owner's plot: a building of 2–5 storeys in which all the apartments stay yours and are let out. What sets it apart from a house for your own family is that the design decisions show up in the running costs for years afterwards. A shared meter for all the tenants, noise coming through the floor, or a riser you can't reach without visiting a tenant all end up costing more than any saving made during the build.

Long-term or short-term rental: decide before the concept sketch

The layout is driven by the rental format, so the format is chosen before the floors are drawn. A tenant on a one-year lease cooks every day, does the washing, dries clothes and stores winter coats. They need a kitchen with an extractor hood, a place for a washing machine, a wardrobe in the hallway and heating they can get through January with. A guest staying three nights barely notices any of this.

Buildings are often let on a mixed basis: short-term in summer, by the month in winter. For this we design the apartments to long-term rental requirements, because such an apartment suits a guest as well, but not the other way round. How the rental formats themselves differ is covered in the comparison of short-term vs long-term rental.

Apartments: studios, 1+1s and risers

We plan the apartment mix around the risers. Bathrooms and kitchens are stacked one above another on every floor, so a single riser serves a whole column of apartments. Access to the riser shaft is left from the landing, through a small hatch, and the branch into each apartment gets its own shut-off valve. If there's a leak, the plumber isolates one apartment and doesn't have to wait for the tenant to come home from work.

• Our studios are usually 25–35 m²: a kitchen along one wall, a shower room, a recess for the washing machine and a wardrobe by the door.
• A 1+1 apartment (a living room plus a separate bedroom) is usually 40–50 m². It is most often rented by couples and by people who work from home.
• Every apartment has at least a small balcony or loggia: this is where washing is dried and where the air conditioner's outdoor unit goes.

We settle the ratio of studios to 1+1 apartments at the concept stage together with the rental manager: we show both options with the difference in the estimate, and the manager knows the demand in your area.

A consumer unit and meters for every apartment

Shared bills cause more disputes with tenants than anything else, so each apartment has its own electricity and water supply with its own meter. Gas, if needed, is connected by the gas utility: we leave space for the pipe and the meter, but we don't touch the gas pipe itself. The meters are placed on the landing so that readings can be taken without entering the apartment.

Each apartment has its own consumer unit with circuit breakers, an RCD and a voltage protection relay, so when there is a surge in the grid, the protection trips in one apartment rather than across the whole building. The common parts get a separate meter: the stair lighting, the pump, the lift. We usually make hot water and heating per apartment too: a water heater in each apartment and air conditioners that run in heating mode. A shared boiler room looks economical until the heat has to be divided between the tenants, and when it is under repair the whole building is left without hot water.

Soundproofing between apartments

A tenant on a one-year lease hears the neighbours every evening, and noise from upstairs makes people reluctant to renew the lease. We deaden sound between floors with a floating screed: a soundproofing mat goes on the floor slab, a perimeter strip runs round the edges, and the screed doesn't touch the walls or pipes anywhere. A single rigid bridge by a riser carries the impact of footsteps to the floor below, so the site foreman checks the strip before the pour and photographs it for the report.

The walls between apartments are built of heavy blocks to the full height, right up to the slab: aerated concrete or plasterboard of the same thickness lets voices through more noticeably. We choose front doors with a seal in the rebate, and separate the bedrooms from the stairwell with the hallway or the bathroom.

Finishes for several years of letting

We choose the finishes on the assumption that three or four tenants will pass through an apartment over a few years. All the apartments share one specification: the same taps, water heaters, sockets and door hardware, and paint of the same colour code. We leave spare cartridges, handles and a couple of door leaves in the building's storeroom, so a minor breakdown between tenants is fixed within a day.

Porcelain tiles in the hallway, kitchen and bathroom, a hard-wearing floor covering in the rooms, and washable paint rather than wallpaper on the walls: a mark left by a tenant is simply painted over on the spot. Furniture and appliances are not included in the construction price; they are chosen separately, as with furnishing for long-term rental.

Running costs of the building

We don't promise any income from the apartments: it depends on the area, the season and the rents. The building's running costs, on the other hand, are visible as early as the concept sketch, and the design itself can bring some of them down. The owner is usually left with the lighting and pump for the common parts, lift maintenance, cleaning the stairs, minor repairs between tenants, a roof inspection after winter, tax on rental income and the manager's fee.

We fit motion-sensor lighting on the stairs, and build the facade from materials that won't need repainting in three or four years. How to work out the net amount after all expenses is described in the section on Batumi property investment. If the building comes to us for long-term rental management, the commission is 15–18% of the monthly rent.

Number of storeys, lift and permit

At two or three storeys, a rental building is built much like a large private house. From four or five storeys and a dozen apartments, it already works as a low-rise apartment building: the staircase becomes a shared escape route, and its width, doors and finishes are set by the design. We determine the class of structure and the permit procedure at the concept stage with the architect and our partner lawyer, from the registry extract and the zoning rules, as described on the page about construction in Batumi.

A lift with four or five stops costs 90,000–114,000 ₾ installed and is not included in the price per square metre. If there is no money for it yet, we leave space for the shaft in the frame from the very first design.

How much it costs to build a rental building in Batumi

A turnkey rental building starts from 1,920 ₾ per m² of total floor area. This covers the frame, walls, facade and windows, the building services and the finishing of the apartments for long-term rental: every apartment has a kitchen, a bathroom, its own consumer unit and meters, and there is soundproofing between the apartments. The lift, furniture, plot, design and permit are paid for separately.

Intermediate stages: the shell of a 3–5 storey building costs from 900 ₾ per m², and white frame, with the facade and windows complete and the services brought up to the apartments, from 1,380 ₾. A small two-storey masonry building at the black frame stage costs from 690 ₾ per m². A turnkey consumer unit for one apartment costs 1,740–2,400 ₾, and a floating screed with a mat 120–170 ₾ per m². The price goes up with small studios, a lift, a basement and a difficult plot, and comes down with repeated floors and identical apartments.

We send a preliminary estimate based on photos of the plot and a sketch within 24 hours on business days. The final cost is set on the basis of the design, after a visit to the plot and once the estimate is agreed, and in the contract the price is split into stages and doesn't go up unless the scope changes.