In December 2023, the apartment sales and purchase transactions witnessed an unprecedented low, a record that hasn’t been seen in the past two decades. The secondary real estate market was majorly responsible for this significant decline. On Wednesday, February 14, a report by the chief economist of the Ministry of Finance revealed that 6,088 apartments were sold in the last month of 2023. This was 15% less than the sales recorded in December 2022, but there was a surprising 47% increase from the sales in November 2023. This increase can be linked to the freezing of the real estate market during the peak of the war.
According to the same report by the chief economist, the drastic fall happened mainly in the secondary real estate market. This was because potential homeowners were focused on properties that featured protected rooms, also known as ‘mamad’.
Interestingly, the period saw a significant spike in the sales of apartments located in the heart of the country. There was an approximate 40% increase in sales when compared to the records of December 2022. The majority of the sales in December 2023 were recorded in Petah Tikva, Kiryat Ono, Ramat Gan, Givat Shmuel, Or Yehuda, and Bnei Brak.
The chief economist’s report also shed light on the socio-economic status of the apartment buyers. The average income of new apartment buyers in the central region was 10.9 thousand shekels in Bnei Brak and 44 thousand shekels per month in Givat Shmuel. Givat Shmuel saw the majority of its buyers from the high-tech industry. Interestingly, 21% of the apartment buyers in the heart of Israel comprised ultra-religious families.
