The volume of home sales dropped by 55% year over year in April, falling nearly to the lowest levels in 20 years, according to a Finance Ministry report on real estate transactions released Sunday.
A significant drop in housing transactions has been recorded in recent months across the country, as prices and interest rates have climbed. This slowdown has affected new builds as well as secondhand properties in the private market and homes sold through government-subsidized programs like “Buyer’s Price” (Mehir Lamishtaken) and “Target Price” (Mehir Matara).
According to the monthly report by the office of the Finance Ministry’s chief economist, just 4,001 real estate transactions were recorded in April 2023, down from some 9,000 in April 2022 and roughly 11,000 in April 2021. It was the lowest figure since at least 2002, except for April 2020 — at the height of Israel’s first pandemic lockdown — with just about