A 90 square meter, 2.5-room, twelfth floor apartment at 10 Hashonit Street overlooking the Herzliya Marina in the Oceanus project has been sold for NIS 3.8 million. After years of legal wrangling, the apartments in the project built after 1999 were defined as vacation homes, in which the owners can only live for three months each year, with the apartment rented out for the rest of the year – but this law has not been enforced.
While there are many deals for the apartment built before 1999, which are regular apartments, deals like this one for vacation apartments are rare because of the theoretical legal restrictions for the owners, even though people seem to live in the vacation apartments all year round.
Most of the deals involving vacation homes that have taken place in the Oceanus project have fetched between NIS 40,000 and NIS 50,000 per square meter, so that this latest deal at NIS 42,000 per square meter is within that range.
The slightly lower price of the deal reflects the fact that the apartment is registered as a vacation apartment, although the vacation apartments in the Herzliya Marina can be treated as investment opportunities for all intents and purposes. The restrictions imposed on these apartments make it very difficult to arrange for them to actually be rented for nine months a year, and it is likely that a large portion of them are rented for the entire year.
Anglo-Saxon Herzliya Pituah real estate consultant Rutie Ainatchi who brokered the deal said that in many cases the ruling is not implemented, due to the inability to manage the rental apartment and monitor what is happening in them, and enforce against apartment owners who do not rent them out for the times allotted to them.
However, apartments registered as vacation homes are sold, she says, for hundreds of thousands of shekels less than similar apartments that are regular apartments, due to the concern that an effective enforcement mechanism will be found.
She says, “Renovated apartments with a balcony on high floors with a full view of the marina and the sea can reach prices of NIS 55,000-60,000 per square meter. In contrast, there are apartments without balconies and without a view with much lower prices.”
Thus, a 2.5-room apartment on the eighth floor of the project, without a sea view and without a balcony, was sold for NIS 2.15 million, about NIS 35,000 per square meter.
This transaction was completed at NIS 42,000 per square meter, which Ainatchi estimates is a “good price for the buyer.” The apartment was sold at a relatively low price, but not one that significantly exceeds the average prices in the project.
Published by Globes, Israel business news – en.globes.co.il – on May 12, 2025.
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