Globes, Eric Mirowski, 15.03.2020
The beginnings of a downward trend; Purchase of new apartments - a record trend. This is according to the CBS data released today. According to the data, 50,831 apartments were built last year, the lowest number since 2015. On the other hand, in January, some 3,400 new apartments were purchased - the second largest since the early 2000s , With the only month in which more apartments were purchased, was December 2019. Tel Aviv retains its place under the National Building Table, thanks to many construction starts recorded in urban renewal projects.
As mentioned earlier, 2019 is the year with the lowest construction starts recorded since 2015, a total of 50,830 apartments were started to decline by 2.2% compared to 2018. Two comments related to each other should be made. The first: The CBS changed the measurement method in 2019 following problems that were discovered in the previous methods. Second: Gaps of thousands of housing units were discovered between the first published and the final findings, and in the new measurement methods, the CBS tried to reduce the phenomenon. You have to wait a few months to see how successful this step is.
The construction champion in Israel is Tel Aviv, which began in 2017 to realize large projects of urban renewal, which led to the increase in the number of dwellings under construction in the city. Last year, a total of 3,344 apartments were started in the city, and it is one of the best years for building construction over the past 15 years. Tel Aviv's eternal competitor, Jerusalem, who led the table between 2013 and 2015, has been relegated to second place in recent years, due to a relative increase in housing prices, but overall the city's free-market construction remains stuck. Only 2,451 new apartments began construction in the city last year.
In third place in 2019 is Beer Sheva with an unimaginable number of construction starts, reaching 2,284 apartments. This is about two-thirds higher than the 2018 construction start, and in fact the highest recorded in the city in the last 15 years. A plethora of cost per-user projects have brought the city to this high number.
Last year, Herzliya began building 1,908 housing units, as well as a record of 15 years of construction. For many years, the city has been accustomed to construction starts with hundreds of housing units, while nearly 4,000 new apartments have been built in the last two years - so you can understand the great frustration of its mayor, Mayor Moshe Padlon, about infrastructure shortages that could take up much of the construction.
Other cities included in the top tier are Kiryat Gat (1,736 apartments) and Harish (1,541 apartments). The one that is different is Ramat Gan, where 1,331 construction starts were registered last year, most of which are probably due to urban renewal projects and TAMA 38.
On the other hand Ramat Gan is at the top of the list of new homes for sale: 936 new apartments were sold in the city between November 2019 and January 2020; In Jerusalem, sales reached 570 apartments in those three months, while in Tel Aviv 500 apartments were sold during that period.