City Review — Jelgava, August 2026
Jelgava registered 69 flat sales in August, more than in any month of the past two years. Over the year that adds up to 597, enough volume to trust the town's numbers.
Just don't lean too hard on a single month. The August median is €778/m², the 12-month median €812/m², and it's the longer window that shows where Jelgava really stands.
The month in numbers
| Metric | August 2026 | 3 months | 12 months | 12 mo. vs last year |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Deals | 69 | 160 | 597 | −2.0% |
| Median, €/m² | 778 | 786 | 812 | +6.7% |
| Average, €/m² | 848 | 824 | 823 | +12.1% |
| Median price | €32,600 | €34,000 | €36,550 | +1.5% |
| Average size, m² | 48.7 | 49.1 | 49.8 | −1.7% |
The month column holds 69 deals: enough for a headline, not for a segment. Everywhere below, where the figure splits further, the window is 12 months: the smaller the slice, the longer the window.
What moved
Almost all of Jelgava is Soviet-era. 93.1% of the year's sales happen in buildings put up before 1991, averaging €785/m² and €39,608 per flat. In new developments a square metre costs €2,013, 2.6 times as much, but there were only 8 such sales in the year. Jelgava's average price is, in effect, the price of a Soviet-era block.
12-month window, average. Soviet-era blocks make up 93.1% of all deals; new developments had only 8 sales in the year, so treat that bar as indicative.
The fair comparison with Rīga. On average price Jelgava is at 60% of Rīga's level, on the median at 70%. Put like next to like, and Soviet-era blocks cost €785/m² in Jelgava against €1,168/m² in Rīga: −32.8% for the same generation of building. Across all of Latvia the same figure is €806/m², so Jelgava sits close to the national level, not Rīga's.
The curve climbs, but not in a straight line. The three-month rolling figure was €657/m² in November 2024, peaked at €893/m² in May 2026 and now stands at €824/m². That is still above the same quarter last year, €751/m². The summer dip from the May peak is real, but the year's direction hasn't changed.
- Sep 24
- 733
- May 26
- 893
- Aug 26
- 824
Each point is that month plus the two before it, weighted by deal count. A single-month line in one town jumps on a handful of deals.
Small flats rose the most. One-room flats are up 26.4% over the year, median price €25,000. Two-room +10.1%, three-room +11.3%, four rooms and more only +1.8%. Same direction as Latvia as a whole: the market is rising from the cheap end.
12-month window.
The cheap end moved most. The bottom-quartile line rose 28.5% over the year to €593/m²; the top quartile 7.5% to €1,041/m². Sales under €20,000 are down 27.4% on last year. The cheap Jelgava flat is getting both rarer and dearer.
The street says less than the building. On Lielā iela the median is €1,046/m², on Pumpura iela €645/m². The busiest single building is Pumpura iela 7, built in 1984: 21 sales in the year at €629/m² on average. At Cukura iela 29, a 2025 building, the same square metre costs €2,374.
Where you can see it
On average price Jelgava ranks 11th of 34 Latvian towns with at least 60 sales a year: behind Cēsis (€901/m²), ahead of Olaine (€815/m²) and well above Liepāja (€736/m²). The town accounts for 2.7% of all flat sales in the country, 597 out of 22,320.
Busiest streets in the 12-month window: Meiju ceļš 33 sales (median €748/m²), Mātera iela 29 (€840/m²), Pērnavas iela 28 (€839/m²), Loka maģistrāle 28 (€815/m²) and Lielā iela 27 (€1,046/m²). Jelgava's curve and the prices of individual buildings are in the apartment prices section.
In Jelgava the question isn't which district a flat is in. It's which year the building went up.
What to do with it
Compare with Soviet-era, not with the average. If you're buying in a Soviet-era block, your benchmark is €785/m², not the town average. If you're buying new, Jelgava's average tells you almost nothing: there are eight such sales a year.
The asking price isn't this price. Right now 159 flats are for sale in Jelgava at a median €1,040/m², 28.1% above what people actually paid over the past year. Most of that gap is mix: there are more new developments among listings than among sales. It isn't a discount you can haggle out, but it is a reason to compare like with like.
Look at the walls. Brick buildings (1.5 to 2.5 bricks thick) average €995/m²; timber-frame buildings €286/m², with an average build year of 1928. A low price per square metre in an old wooden house usually means renovation, not a bargain.
How these numbers are calculated
The town boundary is administrative: a sale belongs to Jelgava if the address's town is Jelgava. Surrounding municipalities aren't included.
The figures come from state-registered transactions: flat purchases only, one whole flat per deal. Houses, land and commercial property don't appear here. The deal date is the registration date, not the signing date, so August's deal count will keep growing for several weeks.
Asking prices are a separate dataset: what sellers ask in listings active today, not completed sales. They're here only for comparison.
The picture for all of Latvia in the same month: market review for August 2026. For a specific listing in Jelgava: the full analysis.