An Inside Look

An Inside Look
at the Israeli
Real Estate Rental
Market
Real estate expert Shia Getter explains
BY NESANEL GANTZ
Shia Getter, the founder of The Getter Group, a real estate
management company focusing on Yerushalyim and Beit
Shemesh. Originally from London, Shia’s longtime success in
the Israeli market has given him an insider’s view on finding a
home in Eretz Yisrael.
three-bedroom apartment?
How much should a typical young American couple expect to pay for an apartment in
Yerushalayim?
Why are there so few two-bedrooms?
It depends very much on which area they want to
live in. There are certain areas where the chutz la’aretz
[non-Israeli] people like to live. These places are more
expensive. A typical apartment for a young couple would
have a monthly rent of around $1,750 for a two-bedroom.
Do Israeli landlords charge more to an outsider than to an Israeli?
No. It’s just that the areas the chutz la’aretz people like
to live in are nicer, so they are more expensive.
What areas are those?
Ganei Geula, Gush Shmonim, and Ramat Eshkol and
Ma’alot Dafna. Ramot Eshkol and Ma’alot Dafna are the
cheapest of the ones I mentioned. Ganei Geula is the most
expensive, and then Gush Shmonim.
Does the average young couple who comes
to live in Israel usually take a one-, two- or
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They usually look for two bedrooms, but there aren’t
many of those available for rent, so most of the time they
have to rent three-bedroom or one-bedroom apartments.
One-bedroom apartments here are very small.
Most of the apartments here are not really built as
rentals. They were built for the buyers to live in. So the
developers didn’t really build two-bedroom apartments.
That was until recently when a law was passed that developers must build smaller apartments for those people who
can’t afford the larger ones. So now each new development has a certain percentage of smaller apartments. But
at the moment there aren’t too many yet.
Ramot Eshkol and Ma’alot Dafna are older areas, dating
back about 30 to 40 years. There are more two-bedroom
apartments available there.
What’s the best way for an American to find
an apartment in Eretz Yisrael to rent? Do you
need a broker?
If you have friends who live here, they might be able
to find an apartment for you by word of mouth. But it’s
very hard to find one yourself, because there’s a very big
demand—so many people are looking for apartments to
rent. If you don’t hook up with a broker, you’ll have to
search for a very long time.
Are rental prices going up or down?
They aren’t going down. But they aren’t going up very
much.
Why is that?
There’s no over-demand and no over-supply. That’s why
it’s stable.
What about purchase prices in Israel overall?
Purchase prices are going up by a few percent every
year.
Why?
There are so many people interested in buying in Eretz
Yisrael that it causes the prices to always go up. The price
of land is also going up. The amount of space to build in
Jerusalem is limited and more and more people want to
buy an apartment here in Yerushalayim.
The rental
market is more
or less filling up
every month.
There isn’t
anybody out on
the street with
no place to live.
What are a tenant’s rights in Israel? Are there
any?
Tenants have very few rights here in Israel. Its a landlord’s market. There aren’t many rules in favor of the
tenant.
Why is that?
Because there aren’t too many rental apartments available in all of Israel. Israelis have a mindset that they want
to live in their own apartment. That’s why developers
build apartments in a way that they should be good to
live in for a lifetime.
Now Finance Minister Yair Lapid is trying to make a
program to build 150,000 units all over Israel just for
rental—so people who can’t afford to buy should be able
to rent. Until now, there weren’t any developments that
were built as rentals.
Is there a housing department in Israel specifically for tenant-landlord disputes?
No.
You’d go to regular court?
Yes.
There’s a different venue for a case in which a tenant
doesn’t pay, called “halich maheir,” a quick route. It’s a way
to get a court order within two to three months to evict a
tenant who doesn’t pay.
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When bachurim go to Eretz Yisrael, what’s
the best way to find apartments?
I know that there is a va’ad for the Mir bachurim that
helps them find apartments.
I think in all other places the yeshivah has dorms or
arranges places if they don’t have enough space in the
dorms.
There’s also Brisk [where there are no dorms
or arranged apartments].
Ourmanagementoncerentedanapartmenttobachurim
in Brisk. We had one or two bachurim in charge of collecting the rent from the others.
But I don’t know that much about it.
JERUSALEM
Do landlords charge more for
bachurim?
Yes, because they charge per bachur and
it comes out to more in total.
Is that legal?
One bedroom: $850-$1150
Two bedrooms: $1200-$2000
Three bedrooms: $1800-$3000
Yes. You can charge as much as you
want. There’s no control of rent prices as
long as it’s in the contract.
BEIT SHEMESH
Do more people rent for Pesach
or Sukkos, and which is more
expensive?
One bedroom: $550-$715
Two bedrooms: $750-$1000
Three bedrooms: $850-$1200
ASHDOD
One bedroom: $625-$1000
Two bedrooms: $950-$ 1150
Three bedrooms: $1150-$1650
TEL AVIV
One bedroom: $850-$1650
Two bedrooms: $1575-$2000
Three bedrooms: $2150-$3150
Sukkos is more expensive because foreigners love to come here for Sukkos and
there’s a major demand. Pesach isn’t as
expensive.
People begin looking for a space two to
three months before Sukkos. There are a
lot of tenants who live here and go overseas
for Yom Tov, and they sublease their apartments to guests who come for Sukkos.
What are the average rates?
In Yerushalayim during Pesach the average isn’t much higher than what it would
be for short-term rentals the rest of the
year. It depends on the apartment, but
it could be about $200 to $250 for two
nights.
Sukkos is much more expensive. It
doesn’t go per night. A typical threebedroom could be $4,000 just for Sukkos.
What’s the best way for people
to protect themselves from surprises when renting in general
and during the Yom Tov season?
For a long-term rental, make sure that
the person who lived there before is still
there. You can ask him about the apartment. You have to ask around.
The same is for short-term. If you’re
coming for Yom Tov and renting some
unknown apartment, you have to ask
around about the person, the place and
the apartment.
It’s the same as buying an oven or some-
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thing. You ask people if the oven is good
before you buy it. When you come for a
rental, you have to ask around.
But what about someone just
coming to Israel for short-term?
Everyone has friends who were here
before.
The Gerrer Rebbe told people
not to buy in Yerushalayim. Have
takanos affected the market at
all?
The Gerrer Rebbe mainly said that
parents shouldn’t buy apartments for
their kids in Yerushalayim until a certain
number of years after their wedding. But
that doesn’t really affect business. First of
all, a lot of Gerrers recently bought in the
new Schneller project near the Gerrer beis
midrash. They call it Marom Yerushalayim
but people call it Schneller, which was
the name of the army base that was there.
It’s very expensive—more than any other
development in this chasidishe area.
Is there still a trend for parents to
buy their kids apartments when
they get married?
It’s much less than it used to be.
The reason it was that way and the
reason a lot of people still buy apartments
for their children is because it’s very hard
for a yungerman who starts off life here to
pay rent. Rent is very high and there’s no
government assistance for it. The parents
want the kids to at least have an apartment, to have something to start with. But
it’s much less prevalent than it used to be.
It used to be that people couldn’t do shidduchim if they didn’t buy an apartment.
How is the process of purchasing
an apartment in Israel different
than it is in America?
There are very significant differences. I
tell people that even though their contract
is written with Hebrew characters, they
look at it like it’s in Chinese, because they
don’t really understand it all.
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