Blog Archive: June 2022

African Union GDP Per Capita 2022*

30 June, 2022 | Macroeconomics | 32 seen

The African Union (AU) is a continental union consisting of 55 member states located on the continent of Africa.  The AU's future goals include a customs union, a single market, a central bank, and a common currency, thereby establishing an economic and monetary union.

This morning I was talking to Rob, a friend from South Africa, we were talking economics, Georgia, and railways and suddenly I remembered a few years ago I did an article about GDP per Capita in the African Union in 2013.

As many years had passed already, since I originally published that article, I decided to look again at the developments around African Union and compare the data from 2013 to 2022. 

Huge was my surprise seeing that most of the countries have actually shrank by their size of GPD, not growing. 

Without further ado, here is the raw data:

Is it possible to buy a 3 bd apartment in European Union Member state for just EUR 350?

29 June, 2022 | Real Estate | 10 seen

A few years ago I bought a property in rural Latvia (which is a member state of the European Union) for under EUR 4,000 - most of the time I thought this has been a bad investment. 

Since my original purchase I have additionally invested about EUR 14,000, making my total around EUR 18,000, and this Summer for the first time I feel I could actually realize this apartment for EUR 25,000 or at least EUR 20,000 without much hassle. See the latest developments here

A few weeks ago we bought a nice summer house near the sea paying less than EUR 5,000, and I already thought - wow, how is that even possible?

New Investment Project - Summer House with Garden in Latvia

Now, i decided to check the e-auction site, looking for some other interesting bargain deals, and I found one, which I decided to take a bid - a 3 bd apartment in Latvian countryside with a starting bid  of just EUR 350

This particular apartment is located in an old Soviet Built house (1960) in a village called Dzelda, some 165km from Riga, 18km from Skrunda, and 70km from Liepāja

Currently, we have properties in Vilgāle, Laidi and Ječi, by adding…

Friends Hub village Guest house review in Vazisubani

28 June, 2022 | Hotel reviews | 61 seen

Friends Hub village guesthouse is located in Vazisubani, near Gurjaani in the region of Kakheti, Georgia, some 2-hour drive from Tbilisi.

Oskars, the host, invited me to visit his new place at the start of May 2022. After a few stops at McDonald's, Sighanghi, and Bodbe monastery we finally reached Vazisubani, where we were greeted with traditional Georgian supra and a lot of chacha.

Here I made a short video from our trip: Sighnaghi & Vazisubani trip

Friends Hub village features a restaurant, bar, garden, and BBQ facilities in Gurjaani. Featuring family rooms, this property also provides guests with a terrace. The accommodation offers evening entertainment and a shared kitchen.

A nice looking palm and Caucasus mountains.

At the guest house, all rooms come with a desk, bed linen and a patio with a garden view. The units will provide guests with a wardrobe and a kettle.

Guests at Friends Hub village can enjoy a continental or a à la carte breakfast.

As Oskars is a friend of mine, he refused to take any payment from us, but seems the price is listed for about GEL 120 pe night on Booking.com…

Top 10 Laptops with Backlit keyboard 2022

27 June, 2022 | Laptop Reviews | 36 seen

A neat feature a laptop can have is a backlit keyboard.

In 2022 the chance of finding a laptop with a backlit keyboard is more possible when looking at HP, Dell, or Lenovo laptops

Keep reading to learn more about top 10 best selling laptops with Backlit Keyboard on Amazon

A quick note: This article contains affiliate links to Amazon.com, by clicking on links on this page and by making a purchase on the Amazon site, I will earn an affiliate income at no cost to you. Prices for laptops listed on this page are retrieved using Amazon Product Advertising API and are updated daily. For actual prices please refer to the product page on Amazon.

• The PC memory has been upgraded to 16GB DDR4 SDRAM for enhanced high bandwidth to easily switch back and forth between open applications; Hard drive has been upgraded to 1TB Hard Disk Drive for ample storage space
• 11th Gen Intel Core i5-1155G7 Processor (2.5 GHz to 4.5 GHz, 8MB Intel Smart cache…

How To Tile Kitchen / hallway floor

24 June, 2022 | Home Remodeling | 23 seen

The time had finally come and I was ready to tile the kitchen and hallway floors at our Vilgale apartment.

A year ago I would say  - no way I'm going to do it myself, but here you go, I did it all on my own, with some research on Youtube and a lot of encouragement from friends who have done it.

As it is in our Tbilisi apartment - I decided to go with large 60cmx60cm tiles, which I bought at the local DEPO store (in Liepaja) In total I purchased tiles to cover 21m2, which turned out too much, but I did put my margin of error as I didn't know how well it will go. Surprisingly it went very well, and I did break just one tile, which I still managed to reuse. Awesome. My biggest concern was the tile cutter, but again thank you YouTube it went very smoothly.

Here I bought tiles, tile cutter, a level, glue for tiles (dry mixture), distancers (3mm). As the tiles vere pretty heavy I decided to buy them in two attempts, or I purchased jus the half at my first visit to the store

Thansk to the YouTube tutorials I understood its better not to start from the corner but instead lay out tiles to find the optional placement

The other day we bought…

Tbilisi Rent to Sublet on Airbnb - Part 1

23 June, 2022 | Living in Georgia | 48 seen

This is the topic I first encountered many many years ago, well actually back in these days it was more about buying a property in Tbilisi and renting it out with the option of selling the property in a few years with profit. 

Throughout the years I've been contacted by investors from all around the world (literally from Italy to Australia and Brazil) interested in Tbilisi rental market. My simple question always has been - what is the return on investment? ROI? 

As a person with a strong belief in the stock market, I have never really understood what the point of renting out is, as long as the apartment is not for free, left as an inheritance. Dealing with tenants, changing linens? Too much hassle for too little money!

In the stock market, there are plenty of REITs paying out divided up to 8-10% annually (the stock market doesn't mean it is safe of course) 

I've been investing with many good REIT's - my personal favorite - O (Realty Income) and Baltic Horizon Fund

It was in early Spring 2022, I met a Latvian girl, she said she was renting for subletting in Tbilisi on Airbnb, refurbishing a…

New Investment Project - Summer House with Garden in Latvia

22 June, 2022 | Home Remodeling | 66 seen

Welcome to another interesting project in the home remodeling series. - summer house with a garden in SouthWest Latvia. It turns out this is already the third, ongoing home remodeling project featured on the blog. Exciting.

This is the project my fiancee actually bought, without first seeing it - the price seemed very good, not to take this property. I was a bit skeptical at the start, as we still have another ongoing renovation project with the apartment in Vilgale, but I found this offer a value deal. 

We learned about this project about a month ago, as we still were in Georgia, we decided to buy a cat in the sack and transferred a 10% deposit to the seller. At the end of June, we finally arrived and after a brief looking at the property paid the full amount in cash. The total buying price was EUR 5,000. Bought, Bought, Bought! Personally, I found it fun, having a property in the EU with drinking water, electricity and some nice garden for just EUR 5,000. And I believe the price will at least double in the next 5 years.

Here is what we got:

House comes with 600m2 of land, what is plenty for a small garden

Nothing fancy, nothing bad…

Pearl of Tbilisi - Gardenia Shevardnadze Flower Garden

21 June, 2022 | | 19 seen

Gardenia Shevardnadze is a lovely flower garden in Tbilisi, where you can buy seedlings for your yard, balcony, terrace, home, or office. 

The place is popular among photographers, tourists, gardeners, and enjoyers of life.

After visiting this place so many times, while living in Georgia, I wouldn't hesitate to call this place a Pearl of Tbilisi and include it among the top 10 must-visit places in the Georgian capital. 

It was an early Saturday morning, at the start of June 2022, we decided to visit Gardenia just to catch some inspiration and I decided to use my good, old DSLR camera, which I wasn't using since our Sri-Lanka trip (where the camera stopped working because of humidity)

The old camera was working again and I could experiment with different shooting styles.

It's hard to describe what photography style this is, Not sure, maybe pattern photography or simply bowl photography? 

Always good for photography

Looking for bright colors? Come to Gardenia Sherdnadze flower garden

You don't have to be a flower expert to enjoy bright colors and good…

Top 7 Aluminum Chassis / Body laptops 2022

20 June, 2022 | Laptop Reviews | 331 seen

In today's article, I've listed the TOP 7 bestselling aluminum chassis laptops on Amazon in 2022

Most Aluminum chassis laptops come with the price attached and nowadays there are both traditional, touchscreen, and of course gaming laptops surrounded by metallic cases. Even some of the Chromebooks are available in aluminum chassis.

Top 20 Aluminum Chassis Notebook / Laptop Computers

A quick note: This article contains affiliate links to Amazon.com, by clicking on links on this page and by making a purchase on the Amazon site, I will earn an affiliate income at no cost to you. Prices for laptops listed on this page are retrieved using Amazon Product Advertising API and are updated daily. For actual prices please refer to the product page on Amazon.

• GUARANTEED POWER: With 11th Gen InteI Core mobile processors, it’s now possible to enjoy…

Hiking Likani, Sunday school Rustavi

17 June, 2022 | Living in Georgia | 21 seen

Another awesome weekend in Georgia 🇬🇪- with some elements of offroad riding, hiking, camping, horseback riding near Likani station, and a few skulls at Green monastery Saturday.

Back to Rustavi scout center for a lovely Sunday with fellow Latvians. 

Our last weekend trip with VW Touareg. 

Minimum Wages in European Union 2022

16 June, 2022 | Macroeconomics | 55 seen

In 2022 there were 21  out of 27 European Union member states with an official minimum wage set by the government.

Turns out this is already the eighth (#9) article about minimum wages in European Union featured on the blog. To keep it up, here is the raw data for minimum wages across European Union in 2022.

Please don't judge too hard, data are taken from this article on Wikipedia, and applied some basic calculations for yearly growth.

Buying a property in Georgia (Dedoplistskaro)

15 June, 2022 | Living in Georgia | 28 seen

Dedoplistskaro is a small town in Kakheti, Georgia with a population of about 6,000. Distance to Tbilisi about 130 km, about 2 hour drive. 

I first had an idea of buying a house in Dedoplitskaro a few years ago, back then I was researching the whole of Georgia and Dedoplitskaro stayed the top of the list because the buying price seemed one of the lowest in the country. When speaking with locals (not from Dedoplitskaro) - I was told that the place is not good, with snakes, earthquakes, and a lack of drinking water. 

Cannot either confirm or deny. Snakes? Probably, the city and nearby area are located on Shiraki plain, which is kind of like a desert. Earthquakes? They do happen, quite frequently in Georgia. Lack of drinking water? This might be a problem, but maybe a borehole is an option? These are the questions we should clarify, before moving on, I guess. And the simple ones - electricity, gas. 

As we had other priorities in life, we didn't buy anything here.

About a year ago, a German friend took me on a trip to Vashlovani, Eagle canyon, and even some abandoned Soviet airfield in Big Shiraki. I had a chance to…

Eagle canyon in Georgia

10 June, 2022 | Living in Georgia | 25 seen

The bear went over the mountain .. or last weekend we went hiking at the Eagle Canyon near Dedoplistskaro, Shopping at the Dezerteer market in Tbilisi, and exercising at Lisi Lake... another fabulous weekend has been put on our tapes and post-processed.

Enjoy the video and thumbs up!

Tbilisi Airbnb market overview - May 2022

8 June, 2022 | Living in Georgia | 81 seen

Recently I've been working on the Tbilisi Airbnb property management service and with the help of this article, I decided to take a quick look at the overall Tbilisi Airbnb market. The size, revenue, occupancy rate, and more.

According to AllTheRooms, the average daily rate for hosts earned in Tbilisi was $40, which is a +5.26% growth if compared to the previous month. while the occupancy rate was 27% (a -10% decrease compared to the previous month)

• There were 6,435 listings in Tbilisi during the month of May (-1.74%)
• The average earning per listing is $339 (+0.3% growth)

Taking all those data together, it seems that the Tbilisi Airbnb property market in the month of May was worth about $2,16M

As I'm looking to rent to sublet an apartment in Tbilisi, these numbers are good to know and might help get basic general.

To make it worth the effort I've decided to focus on popular and highly demanded areas in Tbilisi for letting entire apartments for short-term rent. Looking to rent a newly built apartment in Vake, Saburtalo for a budget of $500-600 per month. i couldn't find exact data…

Tbilisi Airbnb property managment

7 June, 2022 | Living in Georgia | 141 seen

Tbilisi ex-pats and locals - I'm launching a new service - Tbilisi Airbnb property management.

Whether you are an expat looking for someone that does Airbnb management in Tbilisi? Someone that can take care of your apartment and rent it out when you are out of town. Or local looking to get maximum return from short-term rentals. We are here to help.

I'm open to helping manage your property, listing it on Airbnb, Booking.com, and other travel booking websites. Helping with quality photography, copywriting, setting the right price to get the best results, and last but not least taking care of maintenance and cleaning. We will take 20% of the Gross income.

If you have an apartment you are ready to rent out for the long term (at least 1 year) - we are interested in renting it for a fixed price and subletting for short-term rentals. You will get a fixed monthly payment - no matter, will we make any booking or not. We are interested in newly finished projects in Vake, Saburtalo.

We are also open to buying your real estate in Tbilisi or any other part of Georgia. 

Interested? Send me a message and…