The "Globes" Real Estate Survey of July 2009, which examines the residential market, has found apartment sales were at record highs in the first half of the year, and even exceeded the levels reached in 2007. The previous survey, in January 2009, found that the global crisis had reached Israel, putting the local residential real estate market into a deep freeze.
65% of apartment seekers agreed to disclose the maximum price that they were willing to pay for a new apartment. The average maximum price in the July survey was NIS 979,746, 20.9% more than the average maximum price of NIS 810,227 in the previous survey - the lowest average price in any survey conducted to date.
It should be noted that this is a declarative figure, and is line with an announcement by the Ministry of Justice Chief Assessor that housing prices rose by 2.5% in the first quarter of 2009, and with a Central Bureau of Statistics survey, which found that housing prices rose by 11.4% over the past year.
In response to the survey's basic question, "Are you looking to buy an apartment now, or thinking of looking for an apartment in the next three months," 10.6% of respondents answered yes, barely changed from the 10.9% of respondents who gave the same answer in the previous survey in January. The July figure is still well below the 12.8% of respondents who answered yes in the July 2008 survey, although the difference is statistically immaterial.
84.7% of people seeking to buy an apartment said that they were also looking at, or only looking at, second hand apartments, an all-time high. In comparison, 45.7% of people seeking to buy an apartment said that they were also looking at, or only looking at, new apartments. The difference between the figures is higher than ever.
The survey of 500 respondents is conducted by Mutagim Research Ltd. and Bauman-Ber-Rivnay Saatchi and Saatchi unit Azimuth Advertising. The respondents are a representative sample of Israel's adult Jewish population.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on July 20, 2009
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