In nineteen months, the only regulation anyone at Next has ever named to justify its demands is the apart-hotel status of Next White. This page says what that status is, what it obliges, whom it obliges, and what Next did with it.

What it is

There is no "apart-hotel status" in Georgian law. What Next means is the status of a tourist enterprise under Article 26¹ of the Tax Code, granted by the Revenue Service to the company that builds a hotel, per building, on the company's own application, under a government rule. Next's lawyer used the correct term once, in writing: "operation of the complex as a touristic enterprise".

The status is a tax arrangement. The developer sells the apartments to buyers free of VAT, on the condition that it "ensures that the hotel assets/ part of the assets are used as hotel rooms/apartments" through a contract with each buyer: a lease, a right of use, a management right, or similar. In exchange, within ten years of the building entering operation, the hotel's own VAT-taxable turnover must reach a certain quota (Article 26¹(2)(b)). If it does not, the status is cancelled and VAT falls due after all. The state forgoes 18% on the sales and expects to collect it, over ten years, on the hotel's business.

Whom it binds

Article 26¹ has one subject: the tourist enterprise. It is the enterprise that "ensures" the hotel use of the apartments, and the enterprise that "shall", after completion, designate the hotel area and meet the turnover. The buyer is mentioned once, as the other party to a contract the enterprise must obtain. Nothing in the Tax Code or in the government rule obliges a buyer to sign anything, and nothing in either mentions a contract for common-area services at all. The contracts the status cares about are those that put the apartment into hotel use.

The rule adds one detail that explains a lot. The developer is deemed to have received back an apartment, for the purposes of its VAT exemption, as soon as the buyer signs, whether or not the contract or any right under it is registered in the Public Registry. That is why my titles are clean, why Next's own lawyer could confirm that nothing is registered against them, and why no obligation could pass to me from the previous owner even if he had signed: the law never required Next to register one.

What Next said

• The manager: the two agreements "must be prepared in your name and signed by you. This is not coercion - it is simply compliance with the existing regulations" (January 27, 2026); "a requirement under the current regulations, as the building has an aparthotel status" (January 28); "a contract requested from residents of apart-hotel buildings due to existing regulations in the country" (the same day).
• The lawyer on February 4: Next is "required by applicable regulations to have such agreements in place with all unit owners" (message); the signature is "a mandatory condition applicable to all unit owners", an obligation that "arises from the nature and legal status of the complex itself" (message).
• The specialist, to my wife, months earlier: "every owner signs, because now you have to pay, so there has to be a basis for it" (July 23, 2025).

Whatever is true in these sentences is true of Next and false of me. Next is required to obtain contracts; I am not required to give one. The condition is mandatory for Next; it is optional for every owner. The obligation arises from the status of the complex; the status is Next's. Next turned its own tax undertaking into my legal duty, and told a foreigner so, in writing, five times, without ever naming the regulation, because naming it would have shown whom it binds.

What Next knew

On July 23, 2025, my wife told Next's specialist that we would live in the apartments ourselves and not rent them out, and asked whether the management clause could be left unsigned, since when we bought "we were told that in that case there is no need to hand the apartment over to your company's management" (message). Six months later, on the day he sent me the contracts, the manager himself described Next White as "the building where you live and plan to live for a long time" (message). An apartment its owner lives in is outside the hotel management; nothing in the status prohibits that. So when Next told me that signing was mandatory, it was speaking to an owner it knew, and said it knew, would never put his apartments into its hotel. It wanted the signature for something else.

What Next wanted

The specialist had answered my wife's question the same afternoon (message): "You can sign the management contract fictitiously; it's very important for keeping the apart-hotel status". But "of course renting out isn't mandatory"; instead, "for your peace of mind, we suggest signing an agreement on the temporary suspension of the management contract". "With that you opt out indefinitely" (message).

That is the design, in Next's words: a management contract that exists for the Revenue Service, and a suspension agreement that cancels it for the owner. The contract documents the apartment's "receipt back" into the hotel, which is the condition of Next's VAT exemption; the suspension makes sure the apartment never enters it. The other signature, on the service agreement, the specialist had already explained: "there has to be a basis" for the bill. One signature to keep the tax status, one to create the debt. Neither has a legal basis, and Next's employees said so themselves.

The contracts show what else the signatures were for. The management agreement takes 40% of any rental income from the apartments. The service agreement makes every owner's fees part of the turnover Next must show the Revenue Service: under the government rule, maintenance of the hotel's infrastructure counts toward the ten-year quota. Every fee Next collects from an owner is a step toward keeping its VAT exemption. Every owner who does not pay is a step away from it. That is a motive. It is not a regulation.

Questions for the Revenue Service

The status is granted, monitored and cancelled by the Revenue Service. What I know would be relevant to it:

• Which contract, if any, Next presented as the "receipt back" of apartments 16-11 and 16-12. Next says the previous owner signed one, and refuses to show it.
• Whether the two falsified contracts sent to me on January 28, 2026, one of them dated November 13, 2024 and citing a passport issued in December 2024, were meant to be filed as that contract.
• Whether the management contract offered to me, to be signed "fictitiously" together with an indefinite suspension of it, is the instrument by which the hotel use of other owners' apartments is documented, and how many suspension agreements exist.
• Since which date Next has been declaring service fees as turnover of the hotel, given that it bills them from a "factual commencement" of August 2025 in a building that, by its own account, is not commissioned, and given that the government rule does not count infrastructure maintenance alone as the hotel entering operation.
• Which company holds the status and which declares the turnover: the seller, Next White, or the operator, Next Hospitality, which collects the fees.

I do not know the answers. The Revenue Service might.