The Jewish Agency estimates that 10,000 French Jews will immigrate to Israel in 2015, after 7,000 reached Israel in 2014 due to growing anti-Semitism. In response, Tel Aviv real estate market sources have told "The Wall Street Journal" that the potential French Jewish immigrants will further heat up Israel's already buoyant property market where home prices have doubled over the past seven years.
“January and February are not usually very busy periods because of the winter,” said Eric Toubiana, a co-owner of the Comacom Group brokerage based on Tel Aviv's Ben Yehuda Street. “But ever since the period of Charlie Hebdo, we’ve had a huge amount of work.”
Toubiana told "The Wall Street Journal" that his business partner had flown to France to deal with all the extra business.
“We are seeing prices that have been resilient to the fact that they are way out of sync with incomes in Israel,’’ said Chaim Friedman, the founder of First Israel Mortgage, a mortgage broker. “In part, that’s due to foreign demand.”
"There’s no doubt that the prices here are expensive, according to every measure,’’ IBI-Israel Brokerage & Investments Ltd. economist Shai Azar told "The Wall Street Journal." “On the other hand, you have a low interest rate, high demand, and everything that is going on in Europe only adds to the demand. I don’t see a change in the trend in the short-term. But nothing rises forever.”
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on February 4, 2015
© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2015