Globes ran a very interesting article on how popular Ashkelon has become in Israel’s real estate market:
“Not Tel Aviv, not Jerusalem, not Beer Sheva. Meet the undisputed real estate queen of 2020: Ashkelon. One in 20 deals made in Israel last year was in the southern coastal city; one in every 20 apartments that began construction last year was – right. In Ashkelon. Was no factor used in the real estate market, for this senior class?
“The nature of the Israeli market must first be understood: almost half of the transactions for apartments are made in the 16 major cities, and here the familiar concept of “demand areas” fades, since among the prominent cities for buying apartments are peripheral cities and cities not included in the central region. “Demand areas”. This is probably due to the large involvement of investors in some of these places.
The article explains that until recently, Ashkelon was seen as a “a city of relatively low socio-economic status” and not a city that tourists flocked to.
While construction is limited in many cities in the center of the country, Ashkelon, a city with almost the same geographic footprint of Tel Aviv, with one quarter the population, has a lot of government owned land. When prices across the country started to rise in 2009-2010, the government released large amounts of land in Ashkelon for construction, thus making housing very affordable and started a mass influx of residents.
There is so much going on in the Ashkelon real estate market that from 2015 to 2020, Ashkelon was in fourth place in terms of construction.
Read the full article (Hebrew) https://www.globes.co.il/news/article.aspx?did=1001366170
