New apartment sales jumped by 37.3% during 2021

Central Bureau of Statistics finds 56,060 new homes were sold, with seven cities accounting for a third of all transactions

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By Stuart Winer

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and ToI Staff 15 February 2022, 12:17 pm Edit

A construction site for new housing in the city of Gedera, February 3, 2022. (Yossi Zeliger/Flash90)

There were 56,060 new apartments sold in 2021, a 37.3 percent increase over the year before, according to a survey by the Central Bureau of Statistics released Monday.

It showed the continuation of a steady rise in new apartment sales since 2018.

A third of all the sales were in seven cities: Tel Aviv, Ashkelon, Jerusalem, Ramat Gan, Bat Yam, Netanya, and Modiin.

Bat Yam saw the largest increase with 2,057 sales, a jump of 427.4% over 2020.

Tel Aviv saw a 35.8% rise in new home sales since 2020 with 4,111. Ashkelon, with 4,070 sales, saw an increase of 51.1%, while Jerusalem saw 2,848 homes sold, a rise of 114.8% over the previous year.

Beit Shemesh was one of a handful of towns and cities to see a slump. There were 1,741 new homes sold in Beit Shemesh, a drop of 19.5% compared to 2020.

The central district saw the biggest demand for new apartments with 25.7% of the national total, followed by the Tel Aviv district with 21.8%, while Jerusalem, the capital, had just 8.8% of the total, the CBS said.

The number of new apartments sold accounted for 79.5% of demand nationwide last year. In Tel Aviv, that figure stood at 93.3%, in Haifa 82.4%, in the central district 81.7%, and in Jerusalem 81.3%.

However, in the north, the number of new apartments only met 51% of demand.

Housing Minister Ze’ev Elkin is pushing a plan that would create tens of thousands of new housing units in the coming years by offering some cities millions of shekels as an incentive for approving construction projects, Channel 12 news reported last month.

The proposed plan is part of a government drive to rapidly increase the supply of apartments in the hopes of reducing prices and combating Israel’s spiraling housing crisis.

The 12 cities addressed by the plan are Jerusalem, Lod, Bat Yam, Kiryat Ono, Haifa, Netanya, Givatayim, Ramat Gan, Ashdod, Beit Shemesh, Hadera, and Kiryat Yam, the report said.

In October the government announced an ambitious housing plan for 2022-2025 to address the crisis.

The plan — put together by the Finance Ministry, Housing and Construction Ministry, and Interior Ministry — consists of setting a number of planning and development goals for the government.

A joint statement at the time from the involved ministries said the planned moves would cut through the bureaucracy and overhaul Israel’s real estate landscape, rapidly lowering prices.