The average price Israelis are willing to pay for a home has reached NIS 1,317,000, the highest-ever figure in the semi-annual survey, which Bauman-Ber-Rivnay Saatchi and Saatchi unit Azimuth Advertising has conducted for "Globes" through Mutagim Research Ltd. for five years. The price is 1.5% higher than the average price Israelis were willing to pay for a home six months ago, and 50% more than the NIS 878,000 they were willing to pay in 2008.
The continuing rise in the price homebuyers are willing to pay expresses better than anything else that the public has come to terms with high home prices and its lack of confidence in declarations that prices will fall or in the slew of government housing plans that have been put on the agenda lately. The public, which has to buy homes because of demographic growth and the severe shortage of rental housing, no longer believes that prices will fall anytime soon.
More cautious statements by new Minister of Housing and Construction Uri Ariel and other top officials about stable prices, compared with previous statements about sharp drops, has caused the public to be reconciled to the fact that home prices in central Israel will not fall in the foreseeable future, and will remain as they are, or even rise.
Fewer homebuyers willing to pay NIS 2 million
53% of respondents said that they would invest NIS 1-1.5 million in the next home that they will buy. 30% of respondents said that they were prepared to invest up to NIS 1 million in the purchase of a new home, compared with 46% in the previous survey. 14% of respondents said that they were prepared to invest NIS 1.5-2 million in the purchase of their next home.
Interestingly, although the public is willing to invest in buying a home, the number of respondents who said that they were prepared to invest more than NIS 2 million in a home fell to 3% in the present survey from 8% in the previous survey.
"The figures show that the public's awareness of the housing market has clearly risen, as well as its awareness of the goods that it offers," said Azimuth Advertising CEO Benny Keret. "This is seen in the fact that the conceptual price in the survey is very close to the average price of a four-room apartment according to the Central Bureau of Statistics, and in surveys by the Ministry of Housing and Construction, the Bank of Israel, and others. This means that the public today better understands the market. This is a more mature public which has realized how the market behaves, which greatly contributes to its stability."
The survey polled 500 people, half men and half women, who are a representative sample of Israel's adult Hebrew-speaking population.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on July 16, 2013
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