I have recently started watching a documentary series on UK TV called "Place in the Sun", where Brits are helped by a research team and presenter to find their dream holiday home abroad. Places shown have either been Spain, Portugal, The Greek Islands, Corfu, or more recently, Bulgaria and Croatia.

In general they have a budget of 100,000 UKP or less. (that's $200,000). The people looking in Bulgaria had a budget of $70,000 and found houses well, well below that sum. Really nice houses, mostly two bedroomed, but perfectly decent, some even had up to an acre of land and a swimming pool.

One couple managed to find a lovely two bedroomed waterfront apartment on the Cote D'Azur for about $160,000.

Having just been househunting in Israel, I find these prices absolutely mind-bogglingly cheap. Are there corners of Israel where one can buy a nice holiday standard property for this kind of money or is the whole country as ridiculously expensive as the environs of Jerusalem?

That's why real estate agents say: Location, Location, Location!

There is only one Jerusalem!

The further away from the old city you get prices start dropping. Kiyat Yovel is getting hot right now and the price are still much lower than the rest of Yerushalayim. Also Malaah Adumim prices are low.

And if you want to live up in Tzfat you could find cheap stuff as well: http://www.skymarom.com/neighborhood.htm

There are certainly parts of Israel where you could buy something, even something nice, for $200K... but not in most of Jerusalem, or around Tel Aviv!

I doubt you'd be interested in the negev, but you can get a new, huge, nicely built for less than $200,000.

Thanks...I get the picture. Still not quite as low as some of the Spanish coastal resorts but a lot less, as you say, than J'lem and TA.

This is what I don't understand about Israel and it really depresses me. Why are house prices so expensive? Why would anyone pay more to live in a potential war zone than they would pay to live in a nice European or American place? And why is Israel so much more expensive than equally small and desirable places such as Greece, Cyprus, Spain etc? What is making the prices so high? I thought more people were leaving Israel than going in?

There is only one G-d and there is only one Israel and there is only one Jerusalem!

There are Israelis with money to spend, and with the shortage of nice properties in the really desirable areas, prices get pushed up. Don't forget, the bulk of Israel's population lives in a very small area. Even with people living in apartments, it gets expensive. And Israel's population is growing. Even in the secular population, the number of households is still increasing even as birthrates are rising because there are more single people and couples buying apartments.

Compared to Israel, Greece or Spain has an enormous amount of room to build.

Also, costs are expensive. Israel is not a cheap place to build.

In Jerusalem you also have foreign buyers pushing up prices, which pushes people out into other areas. A high religious birth rate also increases the demand.

I still think its crazy. If me and my husband were ever to move to Israel I don't think we could ever afford to live in a nice area. It would be the equivalent of paying London prices for a house in a land where salary is half the amount of what you earn in the UK. I don't understand how people make ends meet in Israel. I really don't.

It seems like a lot of the nicest parts of Jerusalem are the most expensive because they are the last remaining relatively Charedi free areas where the secular and reform Jews want to live. It appears to me that as Jerusalem becomes more and more Charedified there are less nice areas so the remaining nice areas go up in price a lot as a sort of refuge for the fewer secular Jerusalemites and the less orthodox Jews.

Israel needs to import some of these cheap Polish builders that we have in abundance here in London. They do a good job and at a very reasonable price on the whole

<==== Still addicted to "A Place in the Sun". It's positively sickening how cheap people can buy a really nice villa with a pool for, in Spain, or Corfu, or other Med resorts. But, as has been said, there is a huge amount of land in these countries compared to Israel where there is very little land. And in this programme most of the purchasers are happy with a 2 bedroom apartment or villa, although some do get a large parcel of land with it. (these are usually farmland properties in the middle of nowhere). Religous Jews usually need many more bedrooms, and as we have to have a religous infrastructure we couldn't have homes in isolated areas. We aren't comparing like with like.

You can get a piece of land in some empty area of Israel and build in it yourself, I dont think it would cost that much.


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http://www.hashkafah.com/index.php?showtopic=45619

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