Ohh, the real estate.

I have not been writing in a while because in addition to the regular crazy family routine we are very busy figuring out where we should live in Israel. Our rent is expiring in a few months and it could be nice to move into something of our own. We like the area of Ramat ha Hayal that welcomed us this year but not sure whether it is the best for us. Like a pendulum we are shifting between wishes of a bursting life in a small apartment in the inner city to the ideas of relaxing, serene lifestyle in the suburban villa.

 Tel Aviv is luring us with its offerings. It is a self-proclaimed city that never stops and indeed many cultural events are happening here daily. One may say that it is mostly for adults, but here it is: the main Tel Aviv library is offering fiction and comics-writing classes for kids. Tel Aviv opera has a summer camp where kids can sing and sew. Last summer on many Tel Aviv intersections you could spot a piano chained to some pole, inviting everyone to dip their hands in.

 HaBima square is an amazing place for roller-skates, and Tel Aviv promenade has been named one of the top 10 in the world. When I started writing this in August, Tel Aviv had a White Night celebration with many mid-night events throughout the city: an earphones party in the Rabin's square, opera marathon in the Opera building, a set of short intellectual lectures at the University, midnight run in the Yarkon Park and much more. But is this stimulation good for today's already over-stimulated kids? Do they need this cultural exposure or calm? Many times after school our kids are running to their rooms to relax after the screams of school. Is it safe for the kids to wonder the streets of the city by themselves? And we, can we manage with the impossible parking of our large American cars into the tiny street parking spaces in Tel Aviv? Can we downsize our belongings and personal space so much that we can fit into a small apartment?

 Or perhaps we should go to the suburbs. Own a piece of land, breath fresh air, inflate a pool for the kids, have enough space to host a large family event. Not hear any neighbors. Safe and relaxing atmosphere of a village where kids grow by-themselves in the wild. But why then some houses we saw have metal bars on the french doors leading to the porch/yard? Why even in suburbs most people still drive their kids to/from school and after-school activities?

 As you see, we are rather confused. But the largest of all problems is the real estate cost. With the salaries that are on average 1/2 of the US salaries, real estate here is 2 times the US cost. In the US million dollars is a very large number, somewhere out there, with the infinity. Here million is something many people count their mortgage in. At first you laugh in disbelief, you think you will figure something out, you decide to join the protesters that demand social justice, you hope the prices that rose 50-70% in the last 10 years will finally start dropping down. But then you look right and left, you see everyone managing, and know that you must, somehow. Surprisingly, we are much more adaptable creatures than we think and after just one year in Israel our kids are already OK with potential options of sharing a room or moving into an apartment.

As always with Israelis, necessity is a mother of invention. A few of the people we met bought small and old first-floor apartments, renovated them, got permits to dig in same size basements (under the apartment building!) and divided the yard surrounding the building between the tenants.


Most of the people immigrating from the US come to Raanana or small towns (yeshyvim) a bit North such as Tel Mond, Zicharon Yakov, etc. Like in the US, real estate prices correlate with the quality of public schools and general cultural level of the population. Real Estate site, Madlan, recently posted ratings of all schools in the country. However Israel has much more diversity everywhere. We rent in a quite expensive area where an old 2-bedroom apartment goes for $600,000 and a 4-bedroom house for $1,300,000. Still, I am saddened to discover teenagers leaving kids' park filthy in the evening, large dogs running unleashed, few mothers smoking cigarettes next to their kids at the playground and school so unorganized that even the animals in its wild corner were tragically attacked one night by the neighborhood dogs. I should devote another post to what we learned so far about Israeli schools. There is a lot to admire and a lot to feel enraged about.

Real Estate Agents and Transactions.  We have met a few excellent agents in each city, but the rest are comically unprofessional and paranoid. Most are competing for the same houses so they are ridiculously secret. They screen you on the phone trying to sniff whether you are another Realtor pretending to be a client and just trying to steal the house from them. When they schedule an appointment they rarely tell you the name of the street and the house number - you meet them at the closest corner. Many didn't know the size of the house they are offering to sell, number of the bathrooms or the school district.


And even when we thought that we found one "professional agent" that seems knowledgeable and reliable we realized another major problem - most of the agents are dual agents representing a seller and a buyer simultaneously and receiving 2% from each.   They are obviously more loyal to the seller with whom they are surely having a deal rather then the buyer who is probable. We almost bought a house recently realizing in the last second that there is a large electric pole-hub in the corner of the yard. The agent didn't think of pointing this to us even though electromagnetic radiation have been a concern for the current tenants as well as all potential buyers, and tests have been done.

When selling our house in Boston, we were required to move all our junk away, clean the house before any showing and get away from the house avoiding any personal interaction with the potential buyers. We read stories about apple pies placed in the oven to seduce the buyers with the cozy smell. Here, searching for a place to buy, we see snapshots of family life as it is, un-edited: owners are almost always present in the house, sometimes we see kids still in bed or in their pajamas, pots with deliciously and not-so-deliciously smelling food simmering on the stove. We learn from the owners everything that agents are incapable of telling us about the area, schools, parks, building plans and neighbors. At the end the system works out. The process is tedious, time consuming and occasionally frustrating but we discover what each area has to offer. And the fact that we get confused more and more means that they are all pretty good.