The Buyer Fixed Price Plan may have halted the rise in housing prices, but it is also making a large contribution to purchases of new homes. Following a two-year high in sales of new housing units in December 2018, sales plummeted in January 2019. In November 2018-January 2019, however, 22% more new homes were purchased than in the three preceding months. A large proportion of this increase is attributable to deals under the Buyer Fixed Price Plan, according to figures published by the Central Bureau of Statistics.
6,260 new homes were sold in November 2018-January 2019, largely due to December 2018, when 2,440 new homes, the largest number since December 2017, were sold. According to trend figures for the past two months, the number of new housing units sold fell 1.2%. This decline was observed, after the number of new homes sold rose from 1,700 in February 2018 to 1,920 in January 2019, an average monthly increase of 1.3%. The supply of new privately built housing units fell to 25,980, its lowest level since June 2017.
New home buyers continue to prefer homes in central Israel. Almost 60% of the new homes purchased were in the Tel Aviv and central districts. The southern district accounted for 14.2% of all of the new homes purchased, mostly in Netivot in the framework of the Buyer Fixed Price Plan. 12.8% of the new homes purchased were in the Haifa district, 6.1% in the Jerusalem district, 5.1% in the northern district, and the rest in Judea and Samaria.
Sales of new housing units in November 2018-January 2019 were led by cities where apartments were sold in in the Buyer Fixed Price Plan: 493 in Or Yehuda, 487 in Netivot, and 455 in Herzliya. They were followed by Ramat Gan (288), Rishon Lezion (265), Petah Tikva (255), Jerusalem (243), and Tel Aviv (195).
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on March 14, 2019
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