For Arbri, a 30-year-old father renting near Tirana’s former Dinamo stadium, working two jobs still leaves housing taking half his income. In reporting by the Albanian Center for Quality Journalism (ACQJ), he said his combined earnings exceeded €1,000 a month, but 50% went towards a one-bedroom apartment. With a baby in the family, rent had become his biggest financial burden.
His experience gives a human dimension to the affordability pressures documented by ACQJ. Its reporting describes rising rents in Tirana and coastal cities, with young families and people on low and middle incomes finding accommodation increasingly difficult to afford. It supports concern about working households’ access to housing, although it does not establish how particular essential occupations are affected.
ACQJ’s observation of real estate companies found advertised rents reaching €900 a month for one-bedroom apartments in sought-after parts of the capital. Around Ish-Blloku, it reported an average of approximately €800 for that apartment type, an increase of 16% from a year earlier. Near the Artificial Lake, reported prices reached €900 for a one-bedroom apartment and €1,400 for a two-bedroom apartment.
These figures describe particular locations and apartment types, rather than a representative citywide rent. Nevertheless, they show the scale of the challenge in desirable neighbourhoods. ACQJ reported that finding an apartment below €400 within Tirana’s yellow-line boundary had become increasingly difficult, with affordability pressures pushing middle-income residents towards the outskirts.
The wage comparison is striking, but needs care. Citing INSTAT, ACQJ put Albania’s average gross monthly salary in the first quarter of 2025 at about 82,210 lekë, approximately €740. Several of the rents it observed therefore approached or exceeded that national gross salary. This is not a household affordability calculation: a household may have multiple earners, and a national average does not reveal what individual tenants in Tirana actually take home.
What is driving the pressure? Real estate agents interviewed by ACQJ pointed to demand exceeding supply in prime and nearby neighbourhoods. Agent Klajdi Peçi of Century Sun 21 also identified foreign tenants, digital nomads and short-term tourist accommodation as influences. In his account, owners’ preference for daily rentals reduces the homes available for longer tenancies. These are market participants’ explanations; the excerpt does not quantify how much each factor contributes to rent increases.
ACQJ also reported that high purchase prices were keeping some households in rental accommodation for longer. That adds another dimension to the problem: renting can become a prolonged necessity while the monthly cost itself grows harder to manage.
The evidence establishes a substantial housing burden for some working renters. It does not measure commuting times, occupation-specific wages or whether employers are losing staff because of housing costs. Those gaps matter when asking whether Tirana is becoming unaffordable for the workers it needs. Arbri’s experience shows the pressure clearly; determining its wider effect requires evidence connecting rents with where workers live, what they earn and how they reach their jobs.