Building Starts Fell in 2018

YERUSHALAYIM
Construction work on new homes outside Afula. (Nati Shohat/Flash90)

Building starts continued to fall in 2018. In the third quarter of the year, construction began on 10,442 new homes. That was similar to the 10,376 homes that were begun in the first quarter of 2018. According to the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS), there were fewer new home starts in 2018 than in any year since 2012.

Compared to the period between October 2016 and September 2017, housing starts in the period October 2017 and the end of September 2018 fell 17.2 percent. The fall was consistent throughout the country, especially in peripheral areas.

Housing starts in Yerushalayim were down 5.2 percent, while Tel Aviv saw 4.2-percent fewer starts. In Haifa, starts were down 14.6 percent, while in Beer Sheva, the figure was 19.9 percent.

With that, housing starts rose in several communities in the center of the country. In Rishon LeTzion, housing starts actually rose by 30.2 percent. Increases were also seen in Givatayim, Kiryat Ono, and Rosh Ha’ayin. Analysts said that contractors were returning to projects in the center of the country, where there is still heavy demand, as Price Resident projects in peripheral areas were struggling to sell.

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