New-build apartments in Vilnius: what the building on Gerosios Vilties street is made of
A new-build apartment in Vilnius is usually sold from a drawing. The materials come as a list, and there is no way to check the list against anything. This building is the exception, because it is finished, handed over and lived in: it has stood through more than one winter, so you can walk up to the façade and look at how a brick corner is tied and what the joint between two different materials looks like after a few years of rain.
This page covers what you see from the street — the façade, the stair towers and the balconies. These are the parts that either age well over a decade or start costing money. You will not find prices, availability or finish levels here. The developer has not confirmed them, and guessing about an apartment somebody is about to buy is not a service to anyone.
Who it is for
- Buyers comparing several Vilnius projects who want at least one of them to be a building they can stand in front of.
- Anyone who cares less about how a façade looks in year one than about how it looks in year ten.
- Investors who count the purchase price and the cost of keeping the façade in that condition afterwards.
- Buyers from abroad who are in Vilnius rarely and want to inspect the building themselves, without an agent.
The architecture and the materials
Clinker brick, plastered surfaces, timber balcony slats and glazed stairwells — the whole facade is made of these.
What it covers
Dark clinker brick
The main façade material is dark clinker brick, fired hot enough that it takes in almost no water and does not spall after frost. It is never painted and does not need to be: the colour is in the brick, not in a coating on top of it. Rain darkens the wall, drying lightens it again, and that is the whole of its behaviour. Two things are worth looking at up close — whether the joints hold an even width, and how the corner of the building is bonded, because a corner is where you see whether the brickwork was laid by someone who knows the trade.
Rendered panels between the brick
Some planes are not brick but light beige render. That is not a saving made at the expense of clinker; it is a second material doing a different job. Render lightens the mass and separates one part of the long volume from the next, while brick stays where the façade takes the most punishment — at ground level, around the entrances, on the corners. Render also ages differently: it stays clean as long as someone repaints it on schedule, which makes its condition the quickest read on whether the building is being looked after.
Stair towers glazed top to bottom
The stair towers are glazed from the ground floor to the roofline, with no blind sections. Daylight therefore reaches every landing, and the stairs are not the dim corridor where a lamp burns at midday. After dark the same decision works the other way round: the stairs glow from inside and the building is recognisable from the street before you are close enough to read the number. The specifics — glazing units, ventilation, heating of the stair core — are in the building documents, and that is where to ask rather than inferring them from a photograph.
Timber battens on the balconies
Vertical timber battens close the edges of the balconies. They do three jobs at once: they screen the balcony from the street without walling it off, they filter the sun, and they lift the dark brick so the building does not read as closed from the pavement. Timber is also the part of a façade that asks for the most attention, since it has to be treated from time to time. After a few years the tone of those battens tells you plainly whether the building has a working maintenance routine.
Concrete balcony slabs
The balconies are separate concrete slabs projecting from the face of the wall. They give the building its rhythm: dark brick, a pale slab edge, timber behind it. It is a construction you can read at a glance, which also means you can check it — from below you see the underside of the slabs, the fall and where water drips clear. How the slabs are thermally separated, and how the balconies are waterproofed, is answered by the project documents rather than by your eyes, and asking for that is entirely normal.
How to inspect this building without inventing what is not there
Start at a corner, not at the general view
The general view flatters almost any new building. Walk to a corner instead and look at how two planes of brickwork meet, whether the joints run as one line, and whether any bricks at ground level are chipped. Two metres of corner says more about the quality of the masonry than the whole elevation.
Compare the two materials on the same wall
That is easy here, because brick and render stand side by side. Look at the junction: is the line straight, is the edge of the render intact, are there run-off stains under the window sills? One building on one day shows you how both materials behave under identical conditions.
Step into the stair core by day, come back at night
By day, see how much light the glazing actually delivers to the landings and whether you can use the stairs without switching anything on. At night, from the street, you see the other half of the same decision: how far the stair core lights the pavement and whether every section is working. Two short visits, and there is nothing left to ask about this detail.
Look up at the balconies and read the timber
The tone of the battens is a thermometer for the building's upkeep. An even tone means the timber is being treated; bleached and grey patches mean nobody has touched it since handover. The same glance tells you whether the balconies are in use — plants, furniture, laundry out to dry. A lived-in balcony is the most reliable sign that this is a building people live in rather than a row of empty investments.
How an apartment price is put together in Lithuania
No price is published on this page, and none will be invented. Numbers come from the developer, not from a website, and a stale number is worse for a buyer than no number at all. Apartment prices in Vilnius also move within a single season, and new-builds are advertised differently — some by the square metre, some as one figure with a parking space inside it. What is worth knowing is how that sum is assembled, because then you can compare one offer with another instead of staring at a single number.
The base is always the same: a price per square metre multiplied by the area of the apartment. What moves it is everything that differs almost section by section in Vilnius — the floor, the orientation, the area of the balcony or terrace, and the level of finish the apartment is handed over in. A parking space and a basement store are usually priced separately, outside the apartment figure, so two offers cannot be compared on one number until you know what that number includes. Check which area is being used, too: total and usable floor area are measured differently in Lithuania, and the same price per square metre shifts with the definition.
Then there is everything that is not the price of the apartment. The notary's fee for drawing up the purchase contract follows the approved scale and depends on the value of the transaction. Registrų centras, the state register, charges separately for registering the title and for issuing an extract. With a mortgage, add the bank's arrangement costs, the valuation and the registration of the charge. Later come the recurring items: management of the common parts, upkeep of the grounds, and, above a certain value of property, real estate tax. No rates or thresholds are quoted here — they are set by law and they change. Take the figures from your notary, your bank and the State Tax Inspectorate on the day the deal is actually happening.
Terms on this subject
Floor areas of a flat
One flat carries several different areas at the same time, and all of them are correct — they are simply measured by different rules. Until you know which figure is quoted, two flats cannot be compared.
Property taxes in Lithuania
The taxes around a flat are not one tax but several obligations arising at different moments. This article describes how each works and which statute sets the rate you need to look up.
Register extract (Registrų centras)
The one document that describes the flat in the state's words rather than the seller's. It shows the owner, every restriction and the official data — and anyone can order it without asking the seller.
The notarial act
A flat in Lithuania changes hands in notarial form. The notary is not a witness with a stamp: the office queries the registers itself, answers for the legality of what it certifies, and explains the deed to both sides.
Questions about the building and about the developer
How does a clinker façade differ from a rendered one after ten years?
In how much upkeep it asks for. The colour of a clinker brick is in the brick, so the wall is never painted: it darkens in the rain, lightens as it dries, and that is all. A rendered façade looks good for as long as it is repainted on schedule, and in time it needs attention under the sills and at ground level. Both are on this building, in one elevation, so you can compare them in a single visit.
Why use clinker and render on the same façade at all?
Because they do different jobs. Clinker goes where the wall takes the most weather and the most human contact — ground level, entrances, corners. The rendered planes lighten the mass and break one part of a long volume from the next, so that a continuous building does not read as one dark wall from the street.
What does a fully glazed stair tower actually give you?
Daylight on every landing, and a building you can recognise after dark. The stairs are not the dim corridor with a lamp burning at noon, and from the street the glowing verticals identify the house. The technical side — glazing units, ventilation, how the stair core is heated — is written into the building documents, so ask the developer rather than reading it off a photograph.
What does an apartment here cost?
Prices are deliberately not published on this site. What this page does instead is set out how an apartment price is assembled in Lithuania and which costs sit on top of it: the notary, the state register, bank costs with a mortgage, and the running charge for the common parts and the grounds. With that list you can read any offer yourself. The figure itself comes from the developer.
Can I look at the building without an appointment?
The outside, yes. Gerosios Vilties street is an ordinary Vilnius street: the façade, the brick corners, the glazing of the stair towers and the grounds are all visible at any hour, with no phone call needed. Nobody will let you into the stair cores or the apartments unannounced, because people live there.
Ask about this building
Two sentences are enough: what you want to know about the building on Gerosios Vilties street, and how to reach you. The answer comes from the person who works on this project. Where nothing has been settled yet, you will be told that instead of a number that later turns out to be wrong.