District 5, Tel Aviv — the beating historic heart of the White City

District 5, also known as the Lev Ha'ir quarter, is where the city began — more than a hundred years ago. And today it is where everything happens.

The boundaries:

• West — HaYarkon Street, Herbert Samuel and the sea
• North — Bograshov Street
• East — Allenby Street, and from there Yehuda HaLevi and HaRakevet
• South — Eilat Street and Derech Yafo

This is where everything happens

The quarter concentrates most of the nightlife and the restaurants the city has to offer, and commerce here sits on almost every street.

Since 2022 Nachalat Binyamin — a street once identified with fabric merchants — has turned into a night-time pedestrian street, up to the Rothschild section. Along its whole length you will find the hottest bars, restaurants and businesses the city has.

But it is not only about going out. Rothschild Boulevard and the streets around it are a business centre in every sense — a huge office environment that only keeps growing.

And the sheer number of people on the street is what makes this city what it is, and different from other world capitals. The foot traffic in this quarter is something every other large city in the world would only dream of.

Who lives here

The demographic here is mixed — but you can point at it clearly: up to the age of 35.

Most of them live in small, expensive flats, and not by accident — they are simply not prepared to compromise on the location. You can see it with your own eyes too: the number of educational institutions in the quarter is far smaller than in the other neighbourhoods.

35% listed for preservation — and that is why almost nothing gets built here

This is the quarter that holds most of the city's listed buildings. In percentage terms it can reach 35% of the total stock, classified for preservation at one level or another.

And that is exactly what makes it hard for projects to get off the ground. A developer who wants to draw up a plan for a building here answers to the preservation department — which drives the cost of execution up sharply, and usually turns the project automatically into one that does not add up.

The result is a very small supply of new projects. And when supply is small and demand is not, prices do what prices do.

The finest example of preservation that did succeed is the eclectic building at 22 Montefiore Street.

The luxury towers

Rothschild Boulevard and HaMesila Park are today the heart of new construction in the quarter, with marketing prices above ₪150,000 per square metre.

• SHE, by Canada Israel — flats from ₪160,000 per square metre (not for everyone, obviously)
• YBOX — two towers on Gat Rimon Street by HaMesila Park, right on the eastern edge of the quarter, one of them offices only

Prices

In selected projects the price per square metre reaches above ₪80,000, and most developers do not run into much difficulty selling, because here demand genuinely outstrips supply. The product is always in the hands of an architect with a serious name in preservation, someone who gets the most out of the building and the asset.

In the second-hand market the picture is far wider. Depending on the attributes of the asset, deals can drop to a floor of ₪45,000 per square metre — for flats that need renovation and whose attributes are nothing to write home about.

Rentals — the hottest in the city

The rental market in this quarter is the hottest in the city — across most of it, hotter even than District 3.

This year my office let a two-room flat for ₪15,500 a month — with no parking. The tenant is a foreign resident who does not earn in shekels, was not prepared to compromise on the flat they live in, and wanted to be close to the best places the city has to go out to.

And in the new boutique projects, a three-room flat is let at ₪17,500 a month.

Bottom line

If you love history, or simply enjoy looking at buildings and feeling for a moment as though you are in classical Europe, eating, working and going out — this is your quarter.