It is Shabbat, so the wires are quiet today, but Thursday and Friday delivered a heavy run of hard news. The biggest is a broken promise: the Housing Ministry tore up its contract with the developer Shapir on a discounted-housing project in Ramat Beit Shemesh Dalet, leaving 492 families who won a 2022 lottery with no apartment and a clawback fight. On the data side, the Central Bureau of Statistics rolled out a brand-new Land Price Index showing building land has lost about a quarter of its value since interest rates jumped in 2022, and a separate construction release showed that the average new home now takes more than three years to build even as a record number of homes are finishing. In the markets, the developer Aviv Group scrapped a stock-market listing because investors would not value it at NIS 1.5 billion, and raised debt instead. And the affordability fight produced two telling moments: billionaire Alfred Akirov urged the state to fund 100% mortgages for first-time buyers, and the regulator forced a developer to admit that its big 2026 sales forecast rests mostly on subsidized homes, not free-market demand. The thread running through all of it: cheap credit is not the bottleneck anymore, income, trust, and delivery are.
The state cancelled a discount-home project and left 492 families stranded
The Ministry of Construction and Housing has cancelled its development and construction agreements with Shapir on the “Keter HaRama” project in Ramat Beit Shemesh Dalet, the lead story of the week. The 492 families involved won places in lottery number 2052 and have been waiting since 2022 for homes that were sold to them under Mehir LaMishtaken, the price-controlled buyer program. The ministry says the developer fell badly behind its tender milestones; Shapir blames design changes, permit delays, rising costs, the war, and labor shortages. The ministry moved to forfeit about NIS 43 million of the developer’s guarantees (a NIS 40 million performance guarantee plus a NIS 3 million compliance guarantee). TheMarker puts the loss to each family at roughly NIS 1 million, but read that number carefully: it is the lost discount and price appreciation on a 100 square meter apartment, not cash the families had already handed over. Winners are being offered a choice: stay on the original list and wait out the legal fight, or enter fresh discounted-housing lotteries and give up any claim to the gains they were promised.
Our math: spread the NIS 43 million of seized guarantees across the 492 stranded families and it comes to about NIS 87,000 per family (43,000,000 divided by 492). That is what the state pulled back from the developer for each household, and it is a fraction of the roughly NIS 1 million in value each family says it lost, which is the gap that will drive the coming lawsuits.
Why it matters: a winning lottery ticket is not a finished apartment. If you are buying into any price-controlled project, find out who the developer is, what stage the build is at, and what happens to your place in line if the deal collapses, before you turn down other options. Sources: TheMarker, Bizportal. For how the discount programs work, see our earlier piece on Israel’s discounted-housing push.
Israel now has an official land-price gauge, and it says land is down about 25%
The Central Bureau of Statistics launched a new Land Price Index on June 18, a measure it says it will publish every June. The headline: residential building land has fallen about 25% in value since interest rates began climbing in 2022. The path was not a smooth slide. By the bureau’s figures land rose more than 20% a year in 2020 and 2022, then dropped 31% in 2023, rose 15% in 2024, and slipped 5% in 2025. The longer view is the striking part: between 2004 and 2025, land prices climbed about 3.5 times faster than apartment prices, which is a big reason new homes cost what they do. A separate CBS price release the same week put residential land down 4.9% in 2025, lining up with the new index.
One caution worth holding onto: cheaper land has not become cheaper apartments. A weekend analysis in Globes argued that with construction costs up sharply since 2022 and developer financing far more expensive, land would have to fall closer to 50% before it noticeably moved the price tag on a finished home. So this is a data milestone, not a green light for buyers waiting on a discount.
Why it matters: for anyone watching for the bottom, land is the leading edge of the market, and it has already given back most of its 2022 spike. But land is only one input in a price, so do not assume a 25% land drop hands you a 25% cheaper apartment. Sources: Globes, Central Bureau of Statistics.
New homes now take more than three years to build, even as a record wave finishes
The same CBS construction release, covering the year to March 2026, carried two numbers that sit oddly together. New housing starts in the first quarter of 2026 fell 14.7% against the same quarter a year earlier, yet over the full trailing year starts were actually up 1.7%, to about 76,470 homes. So the long trend is still rising while the latest quarter cooled hard. The fresh, rarely-quoted detail is how long building now takes. Weighted by the number of apartments, the average construction time climbed to 37.5 months from 35.4 a year earlier, crossing the three-year line. Meanwhile completions surged 15.7%, to about 62,140 homes finished in the year.
| Measure (year to March 2026) | Figure | Change vs prior year |
|---|---|---|
| Homes started | about 76,470 | up 1.7% |
| Homes finished | about 62,140 | up 15.7% |
| Starts, Q1 2026 only | about 18,900 | down 14.7% |
| Average build time | 37.5 months | up from 35.4 |
Our math: builders started about 14,330 more homes than they finished over the year (76,470 minus 62,140), so the unfinished pipeline is still growing. And completions of about 62,140, up 15.7%, imply roughly 8,400 more homes finished than the year before (62,140 minus 62,140 divided by 1.157). The supply is real and arriving, but at 37.5 months a home started today is realistically a late-2029 move-in.
Why it matters: if you are buying off-plan, price the wait. An extra two months of average build time, on top of an already three-year clock, is more rent paid and more interim financing carried before you hold keys. Sources: Calcalist, Ynet, Central Bureau of Statistics. For the supply glut backdrop, see our June piece on big supply and weak buyers.
A developer pulled its IPO because the market would not pay its price
Aviv Group, a mid-size Israeli developer, shelved its planned stock-market flotation. The company had wanted institutional investors to value it at NIS 1.5 billion before money in, and to raise about NIS 375 million by selling new shares. The demand was not there at that price, so it walked away and turned to debt instead. By Friday it had completed the institutional stage of a Series A bond sale, raising NIS 250 million at a fixed, unlinked 5.45% annual coupon, against orders of about NIS 471.5 million. Aviv’s own 2025 results show why investors were cautious: revenue fell 44% to about NIS 96 million, though it swung to a roughly NIS 39 million profit after a loss the year before. Its assets include a 42.5% stake in the Rothschild tower in Tel Aviv and a 281-unit rental project in Ramat HaSharon.
Our math: raising NIS 375 million against a NIS 1.5 billion valuation would have meant selling about a quarter of the company (375 divided by 1,500). Investors balked, and the debt route now costs Aviv roughly NIS 13.6 million a year in interest (NIS 250 million at 5.45%). That is the price of a market that has turned picky about developer risk.
Why it matters: when developers cannot raise equity at the valuation they want and pay over 5% for bonds, expect tighter project budgets, slower starts, and more pressure to lean on pre-sales and subsidized projects. That trickles down to what gets built and when. Sources: Globes, Sponser.
Akirov floats 100% state mortgages as buying a home hits 157 months of pay
At the Alrov Institute housing conference at Tel Aviv University, real-estate billionaire Alfred Akirov made a proposal that lit up the feeds: have the government provide 100% financing for first-time buyers, in the style of some European countries, or split the loan into a 60% balloon over 20 years and 40% principal-and-interest over 20 years. The number he leaned on is the one to remember. It now takes about 157 months of an average salary to buy an average apartment, by the conference data, roughly 160 months a year earlier. That is more than 13 years of gross pay for a single home. To be clear about what this is: a policy idea aimed at the state, not a developer handing out no-deposit loans, and a Hebrew YouTube explainer making the rounds today rightly asks whether zero-equity buying is a trap dressed as a gift.
Our math: 157 months of salary is about 13.1 years if you somehow saved every shekel you earned. Save a more realistic fifth of your pay and buying a home outright in cash would take roughly 65 years (157 divided by 0.20, then divided by 12). That impossible arithmetic is the entire reason 100% mortgages and balloon structures are even on the table: without heavy financing the average home is simply out of reach.
Why it matters: ideas like 100% or balloon mortgages lower the deposit wall but raise the risk if prices fall or rates rise, the lesson of 2008 abroad. If a no-equity or interest-only style offer ever reaches you, model the payment when rates are higher, not just today. Sources: ICE, Maariv. For the underlying squeeze, see our affordability guide and our note on the mortgage-subsidy fight.
Regulator forces a developer to admit its big 2026 forecast rests on subsidized homes
The Israel Securities Authority made the developer Eshel HaYarden correct the record. The company had told the market it expected to sell between 1,050 and 1,200 apartments in 2026, a bullish number even for the giants of the industry. After the regulator stepped in, it had to spell out that the forecast leans mainly on price-controlled lottery units (Mehir LaMishtaken and target-price homes), not on free-market buyers walking in. As of its late-May filing the company had sold 166 apartments in under a month, most of them subsidized.
Why it matters: a headline sales forecast can hide what is really selling. When even a developer’s growth story depends on government lotteries rather than open-market demand, it is a clear read on how soft the free market is right now. If you are an investor, separate subsidized backlog from real demand before you trust a builder’s guidance. Source: TheMarker.
An ex-footballer launched a way to rent without a cash deposit
On the consumer side, former Israel international Shimon Gershon launched “Aravuyot Yashar,” a platform that gives a landlord a guarantee in place of the usual cash security deposit, decided online in about five minutes. Instead of locking up a deposit, the renter pays a fee of 6.5% a year on the guarantee amount, so a NIS 15,000 guarantee costs roughly NIS 81 a month. Gershon says he put about NIS 12 million into the company and owns all of it, and that it cleared a strict Bank of Israel process to operate as a credit-reporting entity. It is live on more than 500 apartments and aims for 90,000 guarantees within five years, about 10% of Israel’s roughly 900,000 rental homes.
Why it matters: freeing up a deposit helps cash-strapped renters move, but the 6.5% yearly fee is money you never get back, unlike a deposit you usually do. Do the simple sum for your own lease before signing: if you can spare the deposit, the cash route is cheaper; if you cannot, this buys you the move at a recurring cost. Source: Calcalist.
