Haifa tops home sales table for first time in decades

For the first time in decades, Haifa is the leading city in Israel for the number of residential real estate transactions in a quarter, according to the Central Bureau of Statistics real estate survey for the third quarter of this year. Tel Aviv staged a substantial recovery in the quarter, while the new homes market in Beersheva has seen very low transaction numbers all year.

Overall, the real estate market continued to be thin in the third quarter, with 23,330 transactions in total, more than in the second quarter, which was even thinner, but slightly fewer than in the corresponding quarter of 2924.

As mentioned, Haifa topped the list, the first time it has done so since the Central Bureau of Statistics began counting the total number of transactions per city in 2018 (until then only sales of new homes were counted), but as far as we are aware this is actually something that has never happened in recent decades.

The reason for that was the paucity of new home construction in the city, where the real estate market was mainly based on second-hand homes. The unusual thing that happened in the third quarter of this year was the sale of 466 new homes, three times the number in the second quarter and at least a five-year record, bringing Haifa to third place for new home sales after Tel Aviv and Ofakim.

The second-hand home market in Haifa continued to be active, with 936 sales, the highest number since early 2023. Altogether, there were 1,404 residential real estate transactions in the city in the third quarter.

Tel Aviv takes off

Second in the table is Tel Aviv, where transaction numbers jumped 38% in the third quarter in comparison with the second quarter. Tel Aviv stood out for two kinds of homes: 608 new homes were sold there in the third quarter, 54% more than in the second quarter, and the highest number countrywide, but at 726 the number of sales of second-hand homes was the highest quarterly figure since 2022.

Jerusalem is in third place, with 1,327 transactions, despite a 45% jump in sales of new homes to 436, while in fourth place is Beersheva, with 923 transactions in total. New home sales in Beersheva are at their lowest in five years.

Looking at the real estate market over the past few months, there is a slight growth trend in purchases of new homes. In the past three months, average monthly growth was 0.9%. The figures must be regarded with caution, however, as government subsidized homes represented about a third of all transactions in new homes over the period, and it is not certain that the trend holds for the open market by itself.

In second-hand homes, for the year to date, there has been an average monthly decline of 2.5% in the number of transactions.

Because of the low number of sales and the large number of building starts, the stock of new homes keeps growing, reaching about 84,000 homes at the end of September. Over the past year, the supply of homes has grown by 1.5% monthly on average.

Published by Globes, Israel business news – en.globes.co.il – on November 13, 2025.

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