The state statistics bureau says new home sales jumped 38 percent in the second quarter compared with a year earlier, yet more than 84,000 new flats were still waiting for buyers at the end of June. On the same days the sales data improved, the Israel Land Authority quietly pulled 27 land tenders for 10,112 homes off the “open for bids” list and moved them to October through December, most of them in southern towns. Two lawsuits in the Lod District Court describe forged identities used to register mortgages of NIS 1.2 million and NIS 2 million on Netanya flats whose owners live abroad. Yitzhaki Group is buying 60 dunam of Mishan land in west Ra’anana for NIS 250 million. Bnei Brak’s missile-hit building on HaMaccabim Street started coming down, to be replaced by 84 flats. Jerusalem approved occupancy for 667 campus flats at Givat Ram, from Monday night Derech Beit Lechem closes for about two years of light-rail works, and a Ramat HaSharon builder was questioned over NIS 26 million in suspect invoices. On the Kinneret, the state’s most-watched kibbutz land sale slowed itself down, and in Bat Yam a developer formally objected to its own renewal plan.
New home sales woke up. The 84,000-flat backlog did not
The Central Bureau of Statistics published its April to June housing-deals report on Thursday, August 13. About 22,640 homes were sold in the quarter, 11.7 percent more than a year earlier. The real mover was new homes from builders: about 9,670 sold, 38 percent more than the same quarter last year and 18.4 percent more than the first quarter. About a third of those new-home deals, 32.7 percent, came with government subsidies. Second-hand homes went the other way, down 11.3 percent from the first quarter, with about 12,970 sold.
The unsold pile barely moved. More than 84,000 new flats were still on the market at the end of June. Jerusalem holds the largest stock, about 10,320 unsold new flats, with Tel Aviv close behind at about 9,550. Among mid-size cities, Lod has about 3,050 and Kiryat Gat about 2,610. Bizportal counted 5,149 unsold new flats in Bat Yam alone and noted that at Bat Yam’s current sales pace that stock would take more than eight years to clear.
One number we worked out ourselves from the release: at June’s sales pace of about 3,670 new homes a month, the 84,000-flat backlog represents about 23 months of supply. That is our own calculation, dividing end-of-June inventory by June new-home sales, and it means builders would need almost two years of June-level sales just to empty today’s shelves.
| What moved in April to June | The number |
|---|---|
| New homes sold | 9,670, up 38% on last year |
| Second-hand homes sold | 12,970, down 11.3% on Q1 |
| Unsold new flats, end of June | more than 84,000 |
| Tel Aviv new-home sales | 1,236, up 50.7% on Q1 |
| Share of new sales with state subsidy | 32.7% |
Tel Aviv led the country with 1,236 new-home sales in the quarter, and Globes called the city’s first half a five-year record. Jerusalem led second-hand sales with 808 deals even after a 23.2 percent drop. A few small markets spiked from tiny bases: Or Yehuda’s new-home sales rose 617 percent and Ashdod’s 251 percent against the prior quarter, while Netanya and Ofakim fell by more than 40 percent, according to Magdilim and Merkaz HaNadlan, both reading the same release. For a buyer, the practical read is simple: builders are selling again, mostly with subsidies and payment deals, but in high-stock cities like Bat Yam, Lod and Kiryat Gat the shelf is so full that there is no reason to accept a first asking price. The full backlog picture, and what those payment deals really mean, is on our page about Israel’s 83,400 unsold apartments, which this release updates to more than 84,000.
Ten thousand homes quietly moved to winter on the land desk
Between Sunday morning, August 10, and this morning, the Israel Land Authority’s tender database flipped 27 housing tenders, together worth 10,112 homes, from “open for bids” back to “published”. Their opening dates now sit between mid-September and late October, and their bid deadlines run from mid-October to late December. No press release accompanied the change. We found it by comparing the authority’s full tender file day by day, and the authority’s own detail records confirm each one now reads “not yet open for bid submission”.
The pulled list is heavy with the state’s flagship subsidized projects in the south: Netivot with 2,292 homes, Arad with 2,000, Yeruham with 1,008, Dimona with 745 and Sderot with 645. It also includes Tzur Hadassah’s 865 homes, which were supposed to open for bidding on Monday, August 10, the same “bidding day with no bid books” we reported at the time. Beitar Illit’s 561 homes, Be’er Sheva’s 392 and Herzliya’s 238 are on the list too. By our count, 7,696 of the 10,112 pulled homes, about three quarters, sit in southern towns, and the units-weighted average opening delay is 93 days. Both figures are our own, computed from the authority’s opening dates before and after the change.
The wave empties much of the autumn calendar. On August 10, tenders for 24,026 homes were open with bid deadlines before October 1. This morning that number is 13,822, a drop of 42 percent in four days (again our own tally from the two snapshots), and most of what remains still has no published bid book. It was not all one-way traffic: Harish’s 722-home tender got its bid book on August 11 and closes October 26, Beit Shemesh’s 108-home tender and Lehavim’s 76 homes also opened properly, and a new 250-home tender was published for Rechasim. If you are waiting on a specific tender, especially a Mechir Matara one in the south, check its record directly rather than trusting a date you saw in July. We covered the earlier rounds of this pattern when 14 tenders were delayed in one day in early August and when 5,300 homes vanished from July’s tenders; this week’s wave is nearly double both combined.
Someone mortgaged their flat while they lived abroad
Calcalist reported on Thursday, August 13 on two lawsuits in the Central District Court in Lod that should worry any owner who holds an Israeli flat from overseas. In the first, filed last month, a married couple discovered a NIS 1.2 million mortgage registered against their Netanya apartment. They say they never signed the loan papers: someone used forged identity documents to take the loan in their name. In the second, a brother and sister who are Israeli citizens living in Germany say a ring broke into their Netanya flat, stole identity documents, forged new ones, and used them to borrow NIS 2 million against the property. The paper asks openly whether an organized network is targeting flats whose owners are abroad, exactly the flats where nobody checks the mail.
A separate scam wave works the other end of a property deal. A Globes investigation published August 11 described criminals who phone people at the exact moment they are waiting for a building permit, pose as city hall staff, quote accurate details from the real permit file, and demand a final payment. Mikumi detailed a Kfar Saba couple who paid NIS 70,368 to a caller named “Marcel”, and a real-estate firm that transferred NIS 3.8 million; police describe a case file with many victims. Three habits protect you from both frauds. Pull a Tabu extract (the official land-registry record, a few shekels online) on your property once or twice a year, and immediately if you live abroad and get any loan mail. Pay municipal fees only through the municipality’s own website or cashier, never through details given by phone. And treat any caller who knows your file as unverified until you call the office back on its published number. We keep a wider list of tricks aimed at renters on our rental scams page.
A builder’s NIS 26 million invoice file reaches court
Shmulik Gazit, a Ramat HaSharon resident who owns the building firm Niti Pituach uBniya, was questioned on Wednesday, August 12 on suspicion of booking about NIS 26 million in fictitious invoices between 2022 and 2025, deducting about NIS 4 million in VAT he was not owed, Merkaz HaNadlan and news08 reported. The case is run by the Tax Authority’s customs and VAT investigations unit in Jerusalem. A Jerusalem Magistrates Court judge released him under conditions that include a cash deposit, guarantees and a 180-day ban on leaving the country. These are suspicions, not convictions, and the company declined to comment. Still, the practical lesson for buyers stands on its own: before signing with any builder, spend ten minutes checking the contractor register and the court file database for the company and its owners. A builder fighting the tax man mid-project is a builder whose bank financing, and your apartment’s timetable, can wobble.
Yitzhaki takes Mishan’s 60 dunam at Ra’anana’s western edge
Yitzhaki Group, led by Roni Yitzhaki, is buying about 60 dunam of land in west Ra’anana from the retirement-home operator Mishan for NIS 250 million plus possible future payments, Calcalist first reported and Sharonline confirmed on August 13. The land sits next to Road 531, the Ra’anana West rail station and the planned metro route. Under Ra’anana’s current master plan the site can hold about 600 homes, about 45,000 square meters of shops and offices, and about 400 assisted-living units. Today it is still agricultural land, so rezoning and betterment levies (the tax a landowner pays when planning approval raises land value) are expected to cost hundreds of millions more before anything is built. Mishan’s Amal BaSharon nursing home on the site keeps operating for now, and Mishan keeps a share of future project profits. For anyone pricing west Ra’anana, this is a long clock: the buyer is paying transit-hub prices years before the transit exists.
Bnei Brak’s missile-hit building makes way for 84 flats
Fourteen months after an Iranian missile hit the four-story building at HaMaccabim 68 in Bnei Brak on June 16, 2025, demolition work began this week with a ceremony on Wednesday, August 12. The building held 24 flats and was left unusable by the strike. In its place, developer Urbanitop will build three buildings with 84 homes and about 422 square meters of shops, under the demolish-and-rebuild track of TAMA 38/2, according to Merkaz HaNadlan and Magdilim, both reporting the developer’s announcement. The building permit came through in under a year from the strike, fast by Israeli standards, and financing firm Barkat with Shlomo Insurance are providing about NIS 247 million in funding and guarantees. For owners of other war-damaged buildings, this project is the working template: a rebuild that multiplies 24 flats into 84 pays for itself, which is why a damaged building can be worth more than an intact one on the same street.
The Kinneret’s most-watched land sale slows itself down
The Kibbutz Ha’On plots, the closest thing Israel’s land market has to a reality show, are now on a slower schedule that the parties chose on purpose. After the 171-plot lakeside tender (about half of its winners were reservists) ended in a compromise in late 2025, the Israel Land Authority agreed to fund clearing and demolition while development works of almost NIS 100 million are shared, and the regional council agreed to stop fighting the project, ice reported this week. The authority’s own tender records, which we checked directly, show what that means in practice: the next 25-plot tender, originally due this month, now opens November 11 and closes December 28, and a further 48-unit tender still carries an August 24 deadline but has no published bid book, so it is likely to slip too. If you hoped to bid on Kinneret land this summer, the season is December.
Two years without Derech Beit Lechem starts Monday night
From the night between Monday and Tuesday, August 18, Derech Beit Lechem in south Jerusalem closes to traffic in both directions between the David Remez junction and the Emek Refaim junction, and the closure is planned to last about two years, ice and Kipa reported. The works are part of the Blue Line light-rail build, and as this segment closes, part of Emek Refaim itself reopens to cars. Detours run via Jabotinsky, Yitzhak Elhanan and Segan Kohen toward the neighborhood, and via Martin Luther King back toward the center, with street parking removed on parts of Jabotinsky and Martin Luther King. If you rent or own in Baka, the German Colony or along the route, price in two noisy years and harder parking, and if you are buying, remember the pattern we mapped in our light-rail guide: values dip during the digging and recover once the trains run.
Jerusalem signs off on 667 campus flats at Givat Ram
Jerusalem’s municipality granted an occupancy permit in recent days to the new dormitory quarter at the Hebrew University’s Edmond J. Safra campus in Givat Ram: seven buildings with 667 flats, 577 for students and 90 for staff, built and operated by Shikun and Binui, Israel Hayom reported. The compound sits near the route of the Green Line light rail now under construction. That is 667 households who will not be competing for flats in Nachlaot and Rehavia, which is quiet good news for students still hunting. What student housing actually costs across Israeli cities is broken down on our student living costs page.
A Bat Yam developer files an objection against its own plan
The company behind the Rav Maimon renewal compound in Bat Yam has objected to the very plan it is promoting, Magdilim reported on August 13 from the filing. The deposited plan would replace 14 five-story buildings holding 136 flats on Rav Maimon Street with about 430 new homes near the Red Line light rail. The developer’s self-objection, ahead of the Tel Aviv district committee’s hearing, asks for 540 homes instead, arguing the project earns only a 6.8 percent developer profit under Standard 21, the appraisers’ viability test, and warning the approved version would “stay on paper”. The filing states plainly that the long-standing assumption of ever-rising prices “is no longer an axiom”. For flat owners inside renewal projects anywhere, that sentence is the story: when developers stop believing prices only go up, signed deals get reopened for more density, and a project’s timetable is only as firm as its profit line.
Sources
Central Bureau of Statistics, dwellings in real-estate transactions, April to June 2026 · Globes, August 13 · Merkaz HaNadlan, August 13 · Magdilim, August 13 · Israel Land Authority tender database, snapshots of August 10 and August 14 · Calcalist, August 13 · Globes, August 11 · Mikumi · Merkaz HaNadlan, August 13 (invoice case) · news08 (invoice case) · Sharonline, August 13 · Merkaz HaNadlan, August 13 (Bnei Brak) · Magdilim, August 13 (Bnei Brak) · ice (Kibbutz Ha’On) · ice, August 14 (Jerusalem closure) · Kipa (Jerusalem closure) · Israel Hayom (Givat Ram) · Magdilim, August 13 (Bat Yam) · Bizportal, August 13 (Bat Yam inventory count).
