A 50 m² flat costs 4.9 years of pay in Tallinn and 2.4 in Riga

How many years of average gross pay does a modest flat cost? We took 50 m² at each city's 2025 median deal price per m² and divided it by a year of that city's average gross wage.

Tallinn: 4.87 years. Riga: 2.42 years. On this measure a flat in Tallinn costs about twice as many years of work as one in Riga.

The arithmetic, in full

Tallinn pay is about 22% higher than Riga pay, but the Tallinn price per m² is about 2.5 times Riga's. That is where the gap comes from.

Tallinn has become a little easier since 2021

In 2021 the median Tallinn deal was €2,225/m² (n=10,926) and the average gross wage was €1,724. That made a 50 m² flat 5.38 years of pay. Since then wages have risen faster than flat prices, and the figure has come down to 4.87.

Why there is no Vilnius figure

We would like to show Vilnius next to Tallinn and Riga. We can't do it honestly from free official data.

Estonia (Maa- ja Ruumiamet) and Latvia (Valsts zemes dienests) publish deal-level or median deal prices for free. Lithuania does not publish a free official median deal price per m² for Vilnius. Registrų centras sells that data as a paid extract.

What official free data does show for Vilnius is an index. Statistics Lithuania's house price index for Vilnius city rose 89.3% from Q4 2020 to Q4 2025, while average gross monthly earnings in Vilnius rose 67.0%, from €1,644.9 in 2020 to €2,747.1 in 2025. Prices have outrun pay, but we can't turn that into years of salary without a price level in euros.

Read this as a rough guide

• It uses the average gross wage, before tax, not take-home pay, and not a household income.
• The price is the median across all flats sold, new and old. A new-build flat of 50 m² typically costs more than this in both cities.
• It ignores deposits, interest and running costs. It measures price against pay, nothing more.

Browse flats for sale in Tallinn and in Riga, or see how asking prices compare with deal prices in Tallinn and Riga.

About this data

• Tallinn price: Maa- ja Ruumiamet, real estate transaction database (statistika.kataster.ee), apartment purchase deals, median €/m², 2025 (n=9,102) and 2021 (n=10,926). Estonian public-sector open data, free reuse with attribution.
• Tallinn wage: Statistics Estonia, table PA107, average monthly gross wages of employees, Tallinn, 2021 and 2025. CC BY 4.0.
• Riga price: Valsts zemes dienests (State Land Service), real estate market database open data (data.gov.lv). Deals for one flat each, 10 to 250 m², at least €5,000 and €300 to €15,000 per m², by deal date, 2025 (n=11,414). CC BY 4.0.
• Riga wage: Central Statistical Bureau of Latvia (CSP), table DSV041, average monthly gross wage, Riga, 2025. CC BY 4.0.
• Vilnius: Statistics Lithuania (Valstybės duomenų agentūra), house price index S7R251_M2021001_1 (index, all dwellings, Vilnius city) and earnings table S3R0050_M3060322 (excluding individual enterprises). Free reuse with attribution.
• Method: years of pay = 50 × median €/m² ÷ (average gross monthly wage × 12). Deal-based figures rest on at least 100 deals.
• Reuse of this article: free with credit to Live Baltic (livebaltic.com).