The mortgage tax refund ends on 1 January in the four marzes around Yerevan: what flats cost there

At the government meeting of 11 June 2026 the Prime Minister said that from 1 January 2027 the income-tax refund on mortgage interest stops in the marzes next to Yerevan (Aragatsotn, Ararat, Armavir and Kotayk) and will not be extended (ARKA / Armbanks). The State Revenue Committee's notice says the same for loans received in these marzes after 1 January 2027 (SRC). In Yerevan new loans have not qualified since 2025, and the other marzes keep the refund until 1 January 2029, except border settlements on the government's list (Azatutyun, 2023, karucapatoxic.am).

For a family renting in Yerevan and looking at a new flat in Abovyan or Vagharshapat, that leaves less than two months. We looked at what flats cost in these towns and how many new buildings are actually on sale there.

A salaried worker who takes a mortgage to buy a flat from a developer (or to build their own house) gets back the income tax withheld from their salary, but no more than the interest paid on the loan. For loans received since 2025, the borrower and co-borrowers together get at most 750,000 ֏ a quarter. Buying from a previous private owner does not qualify (karucapatoxic.am, ARKA / Armbanks). What counts is the date the loan is received and where the flat is.

A simple calculation. Two partners, each earning 400,000 ֏ a month before tax, pay 20% income tax (hartak.am): 80,000 ֏ each, 160,000 ֏ a month together, 480,000 ֏ a quarter, which is under the cap. If the interest they pay each quarter is at least that much, the refund can reach about 1.9 million ֏ a year. A loan received in January 2027 for a flat in Abovyan would get none of it.

We took listings of flats for sale seen in the last 30 days; the same flat listed on several websites counts once. For each town we show the median: the price with half of the listings below it and half above. It reacts less to a few very expensive or very cheap listings than a plain average does.

In Abovyan and Vagharshapat the median asking price of a flat is $95,000; in Yerevan it is $165,000, so about 42% less. A square metre in Abovyan is listed at about $1,540, in Vagharshapat $1,460 and in Yerevan $2,160: 29–32% cheaper. Of the towns in the table, the cheapest is Hrazdan, at about $1,030 per m². In the resort town of Tsaghkadzor a square metre costs more (about $1,750), but the flats are small (median 47 m²). Ashtarak has few listings (17), so its numbers are rough.

The refund only helps where developers sell new flats. In our listings, monolith buildings (a rough sign of newer construction) are 31 of 132 in Abovyan, 8 of 133 in Vagharshapat, 3–4 each in Masis, Artashat and Hrazdan, one each in Ashtarak and Charentsavan, and none in Armavir. Tsaghkadzor is the exception, with 38 of 45, but it is a resort with small flats. Of Abovyan's 31, 12 were listed by owners: most likely resales, which do not qualify. In Yerevan, 4,951 of 14,701 listings are in monolith or new buildings.

A flat in a monolith building in Abovyan is about 57% cheaper than in Yerevan (medians $92,800 and $215,000), but it is also smaller: 59 m² against 86. Per square metre the gap is 38%.

We also checked another way: assigning flats to marzes by their position on the map rather than by the town named in the listing. Kotayk has 521 listings, median $93,000, $1,438 per m²; 163 of them are in monolith buildings, median $125,000 (this includes Tsaghkadzor and the communities on Yerevan's northern edge). Armavir has 224 listings with a median of $85,500, Ararat 52 at $85,000 and Aragatsotn 37 at $65,000. The result is close to the table above.