Globes, Guy Lieberman, 14.03.2021
The Corona has indeed slowed down the activity of the residential construction industry, but it seems to a lesser extent than those in the field predicted several months ago. According to summary data for 2020 published by the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS), last year building permits were issued for 51,660 housing units.
This is a decrease of 7.8% in the issuance of residential building permits compared to 2019. It should be noted that for long periods of time the activity of local committees, which to a large extent have beliefs in the field, has been reduced and sometimes even completely silenced.
There is a sharp difference in the segmentation of data by regions. In the Central District, for example, the most permits were issued in 2020: 13.3 thousand permits - an increase of 1.6% compared to 2019. On the other hand, in the Tel Aviv District, 11.5 thousand building permits were issued - a decrease of 16.2% compared to 2019.
In the Haifa District, there was a very sharp decrease of 28.7% in the issuance of building permits: in 2020, 4,707 building permits were issued, compared with 6,600 permits in 2019.
Construction starts have dropped by 3.5% compared to 2019
A somewhat encouraging statistic is found in the data on construction starts for 2020. According to the CBS, construction began in about 51,600 apartments in 2020. This is a decrease of 3.5% compared to 2019. In an interview with Globes two months ago with the retiring director of the Israel Land Authority, Adiel Shimron, he estimated that the demand in Israel is for about 50,000 apartments a year.
The cities where the most new apartments were built in 2020 are Tel Aviv, Rishon Lezion, Ashkelon (which also had the highest sales of new apartments for 2020), Ramat Gan and Jerusalem. Central District is responsible for about a quarter of construction starts; Tel Aviv District for about 21% of construction starts; And the Jerusalem and Haifa districts account for less than 10% (each) of construction starts.
About a third of the apartments - at the price per occupant
The depth of the impact of the government housing program that ended several months ago "price per occupant" is well evident in the data. According to the CBS, 29.9% of the new apartments whose construction began in 2020 were within the price per occupant. This is an increase of 3.3% compared to 2019.
The data highlights the fact that like many government programs, here too, the impact of the program remains long after a program ends “on paper”. In this context, it is possible to point to another plan that has been decided to end, although the date is set for the end of 2022 - NOP 38.
Even in this case, the plan is responsible for quite a bit of the new construction. According to the CBS, in 2020, construction began on approximately 6,760 housing units as a result of the demolition of an existing building and the construction of a new building. About 60.5% of them were made as part of NPA 2/38 (demolition and construction). 3,600 of the apartments whose construction began in 2020 were built as building additions to existing buildings. Half of these apartments were built within the framework of NPA 1/38.
And there are two more interesting facts to note. One is positive. As of the end of 2020, there are 126,800 apartments in active construction in Israel. This is an increase of about 3.5% compared to the end of 2019, when the number was 122.8 thousand. On the other hand, the data on the completion of construction for 2020 indicate a lower number of dwellings whose construction was completed compared to 2019. In 2020, the construction of approximately 47,920 dwellings was completed, compared with 52,060 in 2019 - a decrease of 8%.
Sales data: Pay attention to Beer Yaakov
The CBS also published sales data for the three months between November 2020 and January 2021. According to the data, during this period there was an increase of 11.7% in the number of dwellings sold compared to the three months prior to this period.
Recall that these are data that match various publications from recent months that indicate a high level of sales in recent months. According to the CBS, 11.9 thousand new apartments were sold during these three months.
Here too the Central District is the leader with 3,573 apartments. In second place is the Southern District with 2,459 new housing units, while in third place is the Tel Aviv District with 2,290 housing units. In the Haifa District, 1,530 apartments were sold in the three months between November 2020 and January 2021, in the Northern District 939, and in the Jerusalem District 937. In the Judea and Samaria area, 182 new housing units were sold.
Ashkelon, which as mentioned was the sales peak of 2020, also leads according to the latest data from the CBS. In the three months examined, 861 new dwellings were sold there - a rate of 287 new dwellings per month.
Beer Yaakov takes second place in a storm. In the three months of August-October 2020, only 92 apartments were sold, but in the three months that followed, there was a jump of hundreds of percent in the sale of apartments in Beer Yaakov, and a total of 667 apartments were sold during this period.
It should be noted that in 2020 Beer Yaakov did not reach the 15 localities in which the most apartments in Israel were sold at all. Between November 2020 and January 2021, a total of 633 new apartments were sold in November 2020 (an increase of 4.5% compared to the three months preceding them). After them on the list of "peaks" are Rishon Lezion (539 housing units), Jerusalem (489), Ramat Gan (448), Kiryat Gat (417) and Ramla (407). They close the list with about 400 housing units during this period - Kiryat Ono with 402 units, and Beit Shemesh, where 399 units were sold in the three months in question.