Re/MAX Israel CEO Bernard Raskin today slammed the massive land marketing policy of Minister of Housing and Construction Ariel Atias. "Who's going to buy land if prices are about to fall?" asked Raskin. He made the comments at a press conference inaugurating the opening of the realtor's 100th office in Israel.
Raskin said, "Instead of attracting developers to the industry, they're driving them away. This is populism. It's a great mistake to talk about falling prices; developers won't buy land because they're afraid that the price of land is about to fall."
A sample of 3,000 second-hand apartment deals by Re/MAX nationwide found that the average price of a three-room apartment rose 25% from NIS 667,000 at the end of 2008 to NIS 835,000 at the end of 2009. The average price of a four-room apartment rose 17.6% from NIS 891,000 at the end of 2008 to NIS 1.05 million at the end of 2009.
The Central Bureau of Statistics has not yet published housing prices for the fourth quarter of 2009; Re/MAX's figures are the first figures to summarize the year.
The Re/MAX sample also found a double-digit rise in apartment prices in Tel Aviv. The average price of a three-room apartment rose 25% from NIS 1.2 million at the end of 2008 to NIS 1.5 million at the end of 2009, and the average price of a four-room apartment rose 20% from NIS 1.5 million to NIS 1.8 million over the same period.
Dismissing Ministry of Finance figures, which suggest a 6.1% drop in apartment prices in November 2009, and belying promises by Atias to lower housing prices by marketing more land zoned for construction, Raskin predicts that apartment prices will rise by 10-15% in 2010, "and maybe even more".
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on January 19, 2010
© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2010