38,317 new apartments sold last year made 2020 the champion of selling new apartments according to the CBS (Central Bureau of Statistics), at least in the last decade. About a third of all transactions were made in the cities that led the sales – Ashkelon, Tel Aviv Beit Shemesh, Rishon Lezion, Jerusalem , Netanya and Ramat Gan.
In Israel, there are several methods for defining “sale of a new apartment”, which leads to gaps between the data of the chief economist, for example, and those of the CBS. The chief economist considers every sale of an apartment as a new apartment sale, Building permit, if a contractor has been delaying the sale of apartments for more than 15 months since the completion of the building – Helms does not consider them as new apartments. And perhaps with regard to 2020, it was found that the differences between the reports to the Tax Authority and the CBS data were less than one percent.
More than 2,000 apartments were purchased in 2 cities: in Ashkelon, where 2,612 apartments were purchased, and in Tel Aviv, where 2,192 apartments were sold. While the data about Tel Aviv is natural, Ashkelon, which also starred in previous Globes articles on the sale of new apartments and construction starts, is considered an apparent surprise – what are people looking for in it?
The answer is in the “price per occupant”, in which about 8,900 apartments were allocated to the southern coastal city as part of the plan, and thousands more apartments that were marketed and built outside the plan. This has led to Ashkelon being one of the most built cities in the country in recent years.
Like Ashkelon, Beit Shemesh, Rishon Lezion, Netanya, Netivot, Beer Sheva, Kiryat Gat Harish and other cities included in the top of the purchase table are included in the price per occupant.
There is still some disagreement between the CBS and the chief economist about whether 2020 was a record year or not, there is no debate about the fact that 2020 was a year when the volume of purchases of new apartments was particularly high, while the country has a crisis in construction starts and land marketing By Rami.
As a result, at the end of 2020 the number of new dwellings left for sale reached 38430, about 20% less than at the end of 2019, which indicates that the various warnings regarding declines in the supply of dwellings are gradually materializing, which reinforces the pressures for rising house prices.
Although the various numbers will be updated in the upcoming CBS surveys, this is a clear trend.