"Prices in Haifa are now sky-high. The lower city is attracting young, highly educated people. We're positioning the city as one of Israel's key university towns," says Haifa Mayor Yona Yahav, in an exclusive with "Globes".
Yona adds, "We're that now redeveloping the entire lower city into a university campus, prices have soared 500-600%. In a city with breathtaking vistas, green mountains, and spacious beaches, it is areas in the lower city near the sea where prices are lowest, a tenth of the price of a seafront apartment in central Israel. Although the Haifa real estate market is recovering, most people in central Israel only consider the city as a place to buy apartments for investment. Prices are a ridiculously low NIS 200,000-400,000 in the cheaper neighborhoods, and are definitely not purchased to meet the buyers' needs.
"Demand is in the stratosphere at the moment, and real estate prices in the lower city have soared hundreds of percent in recent years. Haredim (ultra-orthodox) are buying cheap apartments in areas such as the Hadar, while people from the center of the country are grabbing apartments in the seafront neighborhood of Bat Galim."
"Globes": An hour's drive south, and prices are ten times higher.
Yahav: "Prices were always different. I live in Denya on Mount Carmel. When my house was worth $1 million, a similar house in the Tel Aviv suburb of Savion was worth $5 million. It's always been that way."
Yahav noted, "This orgy of high prices doesn’t do it for me. Prices aren’t everything. High prices also drive away young people. They can't live cheaply in Tel Aviv. They initially rent, and then flee to the suburbs. None of the young people I know in Haifa live in Tel Aviv. There is only one Tel Aviv and one New York, and we're talking about the periphery."
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on July 26, 2009
© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2009