It’s easy to despair about the prospect of ever being able to buy property in Israel.
Officially the second most expensive country in the world to buy a home in, olim and native-born Israelis alike need to shell out millions of shekels just to get their hands on an apartment in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem.
Feeling blue about the prospect of a lifetime of renting? The good news (right in time for Purim!) is that there’s no need to be.
Read on to find out how (little) you can buy property for. If you’re … flexible.
How To Find The Cheapest Property in Israel.
To find out how little money one can buy property for in Israel, we consulted Yad2 — Israel’s national second hand and real estate website (because everything in Israel is mulifunctional!).
Screenshots were taken today, Adar 10th. And no, we won’t tell you what that date is in the Gregorian calendar.
To save on time, we limited the search to properties that matched the דירה criterion in the landing page for דירות למכירה.
We set the minimum price to 1 NIS — because otherwise the search results dredge up an awful lot of listings with no price tags.
We decided that mazgan (air conditioning) was essential but everything else was not. Come on — we’re not looking to buy the Ritz!
After setting things up so — and enforcing no geographical limit (thus effectively searching for property throughout the country) — we filtered results from cheap to expensive. We skipped over the various listings that were placed there by agents.
300K NIS And Above
The good news (at the time of writing) is that if you have 300K NIS sitting in your bank account — or rather enough money to meet a downpayment on that — then you can get on the property ladder on Israel. A rich relative willing to wire you the cash works too.
The catch is that you might need to use some creative license about what you consider to be ‘property,’ although the listings that we encountered today at that price bracket appeared quite decent. If you don’t agree, then we suggest repeating this experiment over Purim when you’re in a more well-disposed state of mind. Legend has it that in such a condition even a 20 square meter Nachlaot studio takes on the appearance of a mansion.
But enough talk. What does that money buy you, exactly?
Here’s one listing in Haifa that we found for 300K NIS.
It’s 64 square meters and on the third floor. But it has a roof. And it has walls.
Anybody that runs this experiment will be quickly struck by how much property there is to be found at this price bracket in Dimona of all places.
Want to find yourself some affordable property in Israel? Dimona is possibly your best bet. A nearby nuclear deterrent that may or may not exist is even included in the price. Although not the most conventional aliyah destination, this southern time is located within easy commuting distance of Be’er Sheva. The town’s energetic mayor has won plaudits from local residents. And the word on the street* is that the town is attracting new energetic immigrants. (*Any references to words on the street should be understood as ‘the word from Facebook groups’).
For 325K NIS, for instance, you can snap up this property on HaNitsahon Street. At 66 square meters, there’s ample room here for a small family.
OK, enough with the sales pitch. Here are the pics.
Cheapish Property Exists in Israel
The happy outcome of this experiment is that After Aliyah can confirm, with the help of Yad2, that one can find property in Israel for a fraction less than one third of a million shekels. At today’s USD exchange rate, that’s about $92K USD. Repeat this experiment whenever you hear somebody tell you that “you can’t buy property in Israel for less than a million shekels.” Or send them here.
The bad news is that it’s possibly pretty much impossible to find anything for less.
Dimona, for whatever reason, currently tops the chart as the cheap starter home capital of Israel. And if somebody from Dimona wants to sell olim on this relatively obscure desert town, we’re all ears.
Want to see the listings for yourself? Click here to see the results.
Looking to find other English speakers looking to form a mass wave of internal aliyah to Dimona? Join the Facebook group ‘Olim L’Dimona’
Daniel Rosehill is an oleh hadash who moved to Jerusalem from Ireland six years ago. Daniel founded AfterAliyah to host information useful to the post-aliyah community. To contact Daniel,click here.
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Daniel Rosehill is an oleh hadash who moved to Jerusalem from Ireland six years ago. Daniel founded AfterAliyah to host information useful to the post-aliyah community. To contact Daniel,click here.
