Calcalist, Dror Marmor 24.11.20

While the government is talking about lowering the cost of housing, the frequent changes in government policies and plans mostly bounce off the value of the land and the return to the state coffers and entrepreneurs who have won in the past. A Calcalist survey shows that a tender recently published by the Israel Land Authority (RAMI) for construction in Ofakim determines a consideration for land of NIS 179.5 thousand per apartment, compared with NIS 114.5 thousand in a tender closed in Ofakim in December 2019, and compared to NIS 63,000 in a tender closed in May 2019.

In December 2019, YH Damari won five plots of land for the construction of 849 apartments in the new Afiki Nahal neighborhood in Ofakim, and paid NIS 97.2 million for the land, a price that embodies NIS 114.5 thousand per apartment. Just six months earlier, the Ozen brothers paid NIS 3.5 million for land in Ofakim for 56 apartments, a price that cost NIS 63,000 per apartment.

Recently, a new tender was published for Ofakim, in the "Reduced Price" track, the real estate plan presented by Housing Minister Yaakov Litzman, who promised to keep the benefits in the periphery. The total consideration in the tender for four plots for 348 apartments Land for the apartment.

Within a year and a half, the state has tripled the compensation it is asking for residential land in Ofakim. YH Damari, who paid NIS 65,000 less for each apartment less than a year ago, made a profit "on paper" of more than NIS 50 million - just because of policy changes and male exchanges in the Ministry of Housing, without lifting a finger to improve the plan and the land .