Where is The Hottest Real Estate Market?
The inventory is low, people want to live there, the average income is just 35% down. There is no sub-prime market and you have put $35,000 down on the property. Down payment requirements remained high, often equal to more than 40% of a house's value. Luxury high rise go for $20,000,000 along the beach. In Jerusalem prices are up 20%.
Its banks offered nothing close to the US-style subprime mortgages, and Israel's financial market is not intertwined with the mortgage market the main reason for the US housing meltdown.
According to Global Property Guide, a trade magazine that monitors the housing market, Israeli housing prices in the second quarter of 2010 rose sixth-fastest in a ranking of 36 countries. Four of the top five, including Singapore and Latvia, were rebounding from sharp price drops. So looking at the past two years ended in June the last period for which there is data Israeli real estate clocks in at No. 1.
The price of an average apartment in Jerusalem, with its holy sites and mixture of ancient and new, rose 19% to 1.55 million shekels, or $403,000, at the end of June from 1.31 million shekels a year earlier.
The plan is not to set off a housing crisis in Israel. We could learn from what they are doing. They have to be doing something right.
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