Agnese Bērziņa spent three months this spring touring apartments in Riga’s Āgenskalns district before making an offer — a search, she says, that took twice as long and cost noticeably more than when she bought her first flat in the same neighbourhood six years ago, a story now playing out with local variations across all three Baltic capitals.
- Average price per square metre in central Riga reached €2,450 in June 2026, up 7.4% year-on-year
- Vilnius recorded the steepest rise among the three capitals, up 9.1% year-on-year to roughly €2,900 per square metre
- Tallinn’s market has cooled comparatively, with prices up just 2.8% over the same period
- Mortgage lending across the three countries grew fastest in Lithuania, up 11% year-on-year by volume
Why Vilnius is running hottest
Real estate agents in Vilnius point to a combination of steady wage growth, still relatively accommodating mortgage terms, and limited new supply in the city’s most desirable central districts. Rasa Jankauskienė, a real estate analyst at Ober-Haus in Vilnius, said the gap between new-build and secondhand apartment prices has widened further this year. “Buyers who want a modern flat in a good location are competing for a genuinely small pool of listings, and that’s what’s pushing prices up faster here than in Riga or Tallinn,” she said. Rental markets have moved in a similar direction: average asking rents in central Vilnius rose roughly 6% over the past year, outpacing both Riga and Tallinn, squeezing renters at the same time as would-be buyers face steeper purchase prices.
Tallinn’s comparative cooldown
Estonia’s capital tells a different story. After several years of rapid appreciation, Tallinn’s market has slowed as rising borrowing costs and a wave of new apartment completions in outer districts like Lasnamäe have given buyers more room to negotiate. Some agents describe listings sitting on the market for weeks longer than they did two years ago.
What it means for buyers like Bērziņa
For Bērziņa, the search ultimately meant compromising on size rather than location. “I looked at flats twenty square metres smaller than what I originally wanted, in the same building I’d been watching for years,” she said. She closed on her new apartment in late June, just as this year’s first-half housing data — part of a broader look at how Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia’s economies compare at the year’s midpoint — confirmed what she’d already felt in months of viewings.
What analysts expect for the second half
Most regional economists expect price growth to moderate somewhat in the second half of 2026 as elevated mortgage rates continue to weigh on affordability, though none are forecasting outright price declines in any of the three capitals absent a broader economic shock. For now, agents in all three cities report the same underlying dynamic — steady demand from young professionals and a persistent shortage of centrally located, moderately priced apartments — even as the pace of price growth diverges more sharply between the capitals than it has in several years.
