Real Estate Market Review — August 2026
1,635 apartment purchases have been registered in Latvia for August so far. That number will still grow — the register fills a month in with a lag — so this month, too, the story is price, not volume.
The typical square metre bought in August cost €880; a year ago it was €823. That is 6.9% more, and the rise again comes from the cheap end: one-room flats are 16.6% dearer than a year ago, while two- and three-room flats have barely moved. The market is still growing from the bottom.
The month in numbers
| Metric | August 2026 | Year on year |
|---|---|---|
| Median, €/m² | 880 | +6.9% |
| Mean, €/m² | 999 | +3.3% |
| Median price | €42,000 | +8.4% |
| Mean price | €56,528 | +3.2% |
| Rīga, mean €/m² | 1,354 | +2.1% |
| Deals | 1,635 | −19.7% * |
| Turnover | €92.4 M | −17.2% * |
* The volume rows will still grow — see the last section. Over the year so far the picture is calmer: 14,554 deals in January–August against 15,072 a year earlier, −3.4%.
The mean flat price is 34.6% above the median — €56,528 against €42,000. It is the same gap as in July: a few expensive purchases pull the mean up. When you are looking for your own flat, the median is the number you want.
What moved
One-room flats — 16.6% dearer. €29,190 on average against €25,042 in August last year. A two-room flat cost €47,357 (+0.6%) and a three-room flat €78,487 (+0.1%) — practically last year's price. For the second month running, it is the smallest flat that is getting more expensive.
August 2026 against August 2025. Only 17 five-room-plus flats sold in the month — that figure swings on a handful of deals.
In Rīga, panel blocks are rising; new buildings are not. A square metre in a Soviet-era panel block cost €1,197, +11.2% on the year. In a new development, €2,226, −0.2%. The gap is still 85.9%, but it is closing from below, not from above.
August 2026. Panel blocks +11.2% on a year ago, new developments −0.2%.
The cheap end is moving faster than the expensive one. The bottom quartile sits at €477/m², +10.6% on the year; the top quartile at €1,293/m², +3.0%. At the very ends the difference is sharper still: the bottom 10% line is up 35.2%, the top 10% line down 11.2%. Deals under €20,000 are fewer too — 23.6% against 27.0% a year ago. Cheap flats are not disappearing; they are getting dearer.
Jūrmala, and Ziepniekkalns again. Jūrmala: €1,235/m² over the last three months, +16.3% against the same quarter a year ago, across 142 deals. In Rīga the biggest mover was Ziepniekkalns: €1,484/m², +55.2%, 103 deals — the same district that topped the list in July. Both figures are three-month windows.
Five Augusts. In August 2022 the average square metre cost €813; in 2023, €809; in 2024, €828. Then a jump: €967 by August 2025, and €999 this year. That is +22.9% since 2022, and most of it happened in a single year.
- Sep 24
- 732
- Jun 26
- 914
- Aug 26
- 880
Median, €/m². Each point is one month.
Where you can see it
Rīga produced 793 deals in August, 48.5% of the country — a year ago it was 52.2%. The median in Rīga is €1,187/m².
Outside Rīga the scale is different: Jūrmala €973/m², Liepāja €787, Jelgava €778, Ventspils €602, Daugavpils €360 (medians). Rural parishes and villages accounted for 196 deals in August, at €479/m² on average, +7.9% on the year. Within Rīga, Centrs costs €2,402/m² and Vecmīlgrāvis €770/m² — a factor of 3.1 inside one city.
The full curve for every city since 2012 is in apartment prices in Latvia — those figures update on their own and are not tied to this month.
If you are buying in the cheapest third, your market is rising faster than the one in the headlines.
What to do with it
Compare your segment, not the country. If you are buying a one-room flat, the number that applies to you is the one-room figure — €868/m² on average — not the national one. For the second month running, the two say different things.
The asking price is not this price. Everything in this review is what a deal actually closed at. The price in a listing can sit above it for months — the gap between the two is your negotiating material.
In a small town, read three months, not one. Below 30 deals a month, a couple of expensive purchases move the average on their own. A three-month window is the same measure with three times the sample.
How these numbers are calculated
The figures come from registered transactions — from what was actually bought, not from listings. Only apartment purchases are included: houses, land and commercial property do not appear here. Each deal is one whole flat; fractional shares and single sales split across several records have been removed.
The date is the registration date, not the signing date, and the register fills a month in with a lag. That is why the deal count and turnover will keep growing for several weeks after this is published. An example: the July review counted 1,828 deals for July; the register now holds 2,046. The lag barely touches the price measures; it does move the volume ones. That is exactly why the headline is a price, not a count.
Cities with fewer than 30 deals in a month, and Rīga's districts, are shown on a three-month figure.
Prices for every city and for hundreds of individual addresses — apartment prices in Latvia. For a specific listing — the full analysis.