Block estates: where flats cost more, and where they are rising

The maps show the outlines of the named estates. An outline is computed from the blocks' footprints and is not an official boundary. Click an estate to open its page.

Of the flats on named estates, 80% were built in 1960–1989. 8% are older than 1960, only 3% are from the 1990s, and 9% are from after 2000, mostly on the public funds' new estates. A block estate is almost always a socialist one, built in three decades.

Within a town, estates differ in price less than one might expect. In Koper the dearest named estate costs only 1.05 times the cheapest, in Celje 1.10 times, in Maribor 1.18 times.

Ljubljana is the exception. Trnovo sells at €4,780/m² and Studenec at €3,401/m², a ratio of 1.41. The median of all Ljubljana blocks is €3,806/m².

How did an estate's price move against its town? We measured price against GURS value, which removes the flat's size, age and storey, and compared it with the town's median of the same year. Between 2013–2016 and 2022–2025, 48 of the 59 estates with enough sales rose faster than the blocks of their town, by 3.5% on average. Flats on named estates gained on free-standing blocks and older buildings in town centres.

The cheaper estates did not catch up with the dearer ones. The link between the starting price and the change is close to nil (correlation −0.10). The largest gains were Rakovnik (Ljubljana, +20%), Selo (Ljubljana, +17%) and Gaberje (Celje, +14%); Ob Kornu (Nova Gorica, −7%) and Spodnje Radvanje (Maribor, −5%) lost ground. At 15–20 sales a window the uncertainty is large.

For every estate we found a twin: the estate with the most similar blocks. The match uses the cadastre's building vector, which describes a block's form, size, age, construction, energy certificate and plot. Price, place and residents are not in it. So the price gap between twins tells what the location is worth.

The twins are often strikingly close. BS6 in Ljubljana (around 1965) has its twin in Otok, Celje (around 1962), and Štepanjsko naselje (around 1976) in Cankarjeva soseska, Nova Gorica (around 1975). A Ljubljana estate is dearer than its twin elsewhere in all 25 cases, by 1.38 to 2.19 times, 1.79 times at the median. That is what a Ljubljana location is worth for the same block.

Gross yield, a year's rent over the price, runs from 2.0% (Markovec, Koper) to 4.5% (Greenwich, Maribor). On dearer estates rent does not keep up with price: a landlord in Koper earns less per euro of price than one in Maribor.

The share of residents with tertiary education runs from 15% (Gorica, Velenje) to 71% (Vrhovci, Ljubljana).

Ljubljana's large 1970s estates (Nove Fužine, Nove Jarše, Ruski car, BS3, Trnovo) have 26% to 30% of residents aged 65+, against 20% for the city's blocks. Probably the first residents grew old there, but the statistical grid is a single snapshot and cannot show it.

The table below holds every estate with 300+ flats. Click a column heading to sort, an estate's name for its page.

- An estate's boundary is not official. The name is a place name from the register or OpenStreetMap; the group of blocks is ours. Where a name covers a wider area (Tabor, Vič, Šiška), the page describes only its blocks. - Some towns are named less well. In Kranj and Maribor only part of the estates carry a name, because the register and OpenStreetMap do not hold the colloquial names there. - New estates have no prices. On estates built since 2018 the sales are mostly developers' and funds' first sales; there are 5. - The share of flats let is a floor. Public landlords do not always file their lettings; on Polje none is filed. - Distances are straight-line, and stops come from OpenStreetMap; timetables and noise are in no source.