Is the market good or not?

I am Gilad Bouzaglou, an active broker in Tel Aviv for four years. Over the past two years — which in my assessment were the hardest the Israeli market has seen in two decades — I closed 18 deals.

This is not my second job. I am not a rentals agent trying his luck at sales. This is my profession, and I live and breathe this market every day.

And there is one question that comes up very early in every phone call: How is the market? Is it good or not?

So here is the answer, with the whole truth — even the parts that are not pretty.

The market is good. It is simply slow.

Let us replace feelings with numbers.

According to the Israeli government real-estate portal (nadlan.gov.il), which publishes Tax Authority data, 5,051 sale transactions were recorded in Tel Aviv-Yafo over the past year.

That is roughly 420 deals a month. About 14 deals on every working day.

A market closing fourteen deals a day is not a frozen market.

And the real number is higher

In my professional assessment, around a quarter of actual transactions never reach the public database. There is a lag between signing and publication, and some deals are never published there at all.

I know this first-hand: not one of the deals I closed this year appears in the database today.

So the real figure is closer to 6,700 transactions a year. Anyone relying on the public database to decide whether "the market is moving" is looking at three quarters of the picture and imagining they see all of it.

And here is the real answer: the market did not change — buyers did

This is the part almost nobody says out loud.

It is not that the market is bad. Buyers' priorities have changed at the root.

Since the first round with Iran, in April 2024, the rules of the game in Tel Aviv changed completely.

Apartments in buildings with no shelter and no safe room (MAMAD) used to sell easily, at full market price. Today they simply do not sell — even at 20% below market.

Why? Because an investor asks himself: "Maybe nobody will want this from me on the day I sell, maybe it will not be easy, maybe I will not get the price I want." And for someone buying a home to live in, this stopped being a consideration on the side. It is a condition.

Foreign buyers changed too. It used to make no difference to them at all, because these were holiday apartments. Today they are no longer willing to buy so easily in a building without a shelter, or an apartment without a safe room.

I see it every day: there are apartments like these sitting on the shelf for over a year. Tel Aviv has not known anything like it. Perhaps ever.

An example from my own listings, right now

So this does not stay theoretical — here is a property I am marketing today.

A 4-room apartment at 19 Mapu St: 102 sqm, fully renovated, plus a covered balcony of about 7 sqm, 390 metres from Frishman beach. That works out at roughly ₪52,700 per sqm.

The average for this part of the Old North stands at about ₪65,700 per sqm.

That is exactly the 20% gap I described. And not because the apartment is inferior — it is fully renovated and minutes from the sea — but because the building has no shelter.

Anyone that consideration does not stop is buying an excellent property here, at a gap that simply did not exist in Tel Aviv before April 2024.

See the listing at 19 Mapu St

What to do about it

If you are selling an apartment in a building with no shelter: do not expect the price your neighbour got three years ago. Go to market from day one at a price that accounts for this, and know it will take longer. And if there is any way to add a safe room, look into it seriously. Today it is no longer an upgrade — it is what decides whether you sell at all.

And if you are buying: this is exactly where the opportunity of this period sits. Anyone willing to live in a building without a shelter, or who has a way to solve it, is buying today at prices Tel Aviv has not offered in years.

What else changed: every timeline got longer

Lawyers' drafts take longer. Negotiations run longer. The number of viewings before a decision is higher. And the number of people a buyer consults before deciding — higher still.

Each of those adds weeks. Together they turn a deal that once closed in a month into one that takes three.

If you are selling: do not read three weeks without an offer as "we got the price wrong". Give the process its time — but set a review point in advance, and honour it.

And if you are buying: do not fall in love with an apartment you must move into within a month. That timeline no longer exists, and anyone entering a negotiation on a short deadline pays for it.

And before you ask about the price drop

That same government portal also shows a fall of about 1.5% in the median price in Tel Aviv over the past year.

Correct. And it does not contradict a word of what I said.

"A good market" does not mean "rising prices". A good market is one where deals close. Anyone looking for the price growth of 2021 will be disappointed. Anyone who wants to sell or buy at the right price — the market is here for them, and it works.

Bottom line

The market is good. It is simply slower, less patient, and far less forgiving of a wrong price — and above all, it is no longer willing to do without a shelter.

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*Figures checked on 29 September 2026 on the Israeli government real-estate portal, filtered to "past year" for Tel Aviv-Yafo.*