Foreign Citizens in Armenia's Real Estate Market

Foreign citizens are not significantly active in the Armenian real estate market. According to 2021 data, foreign citizens were involved in only 8.2% of registered real estate transactions in the country. Overall, foreigners sold more real estate in Armenia than they bought.

As evidenced by data from the Cadastre Committee, in 2021, foreign citizens participated in 4,621 real estate transactions in Armenia, accounting for 8.2% of the total registered transactions in the republic. In 1,466 cases, foreign citizens acted solely as buyers, in 3,034 cases as sellers, and in 121 cases both parties were foreign citizens. Thus, in 65.7% of transactions conducted by foreign citizens in 2021, they acted solely as sellers.

In the second half of 2021, the Armenian real estate market significantly intensified. Throughout the year, a record number of transactions, including sales, was recorded in the market, the highest in at least the last ten years. Market agents attribute this activity to the restrictions of the income tax refund program, prompting citizens to quickly take advantage of the program, as well as delayed transactions from 2020 and other factors.

Notably, in 2021, the number of transactions conducted by foreigners also increased, with sales transactions becoming more active than purchases. Overall, in 2021, foreign citizens conducted 3,155 sales transactions in Armenia, an increase of 37.1% compared to 2020. During the same period, the number of purchase transactions grew at a more modest pace of 21.1%, totaling 1,587.

In both purchase and sale categories, the largest shares involved apartments in multi-family buildings. Specifically, in 2021, 45.6% of the properties purchased by foreign citizens were apartments, while 40.5% of the properties sold were also apartments. This indicates that currently, foreign citizens are less interested in production and commercial buildings, as well as land, including agricultural land in Armenia.

Foreign citizens are primarily interested in real estate located in Yerevan. In 2021, about 58% of the properties purchased by them were situated in Yerevan, and 29.9% of the sold properties were located there.

The most active buyers and sellers among foreign citizens are Russians, who sold three times more properties than they purchased. Among the 1,587 transactions for property acquisition by foreign citizens in 2021, 833, or 52%, involved Russian citizens. It is no secret that this mainly concerns Armenians living in Russia. The number of properties purchased by them increased by 8.6% compared to 2020. However, at the same time, the quantity of properties sold by Russian citizens rose by 34.6%. In 2021, they completed 2,559 sales transactions in Armenia’s real estate market, constituting 81% of the total number of properties sold by foreign citizens in that year. Thus, in 2021, Russian citizens had three times more sales transactions than acquisition transactions in Armenia’s real estate market.

Besides Russians, transactions by citizens from other countries in the Armenian real estate market remained relatively small in number. The only notable exceptions were American citizens, who purchased 245 properties in Armenia in 2021 (15% of total purchase transactions) and sold 185 properties (6% of total sales transactions).