Yehuda Morgenstern, Eilat Real Estate Center Conference 2024/Now Media
The main annual event of the real estate industry, the Eilat Real Estate Center Conference 2024, which is being held in partnership with Media Real Estate, opened yesterday (Tuesday) and hosted the senior officials of the real estate industry, senior officials of the Israeli economy, and managers of relevant ministries and government bodies.
The first day of the conference dealt with the most burning issues in the construction industry these days, which concern the great distress of working hands, including the bringing in of foreign workers and the non-inclusion of Palestinian workers.
Yehuda Morgenstern, CEO of the Ministry of Construction and Housing, addressed the manpower problem in the industry in an open discussion with senior officials of the Ministry of Housing, "We have doubled the quota of foreign workers to 65,000.
We realized that it was not enough.
Our job is to sort them and in the contractors association we sorted 20 thousand workers for us, and individual workers entered the country.
We ask why the corporations do not attract enough workers.
We realized that there was a need for workers, we created inventory and are not taking them at a fast pace.
We have a problem with the need process between demand and supply that has not been completed."
"They said there are those with interests who want to bring them in slowly, and we pressured the immigration authority to approve new corporations, the 69 new corporations and to give them the first allocation with the understanding that the old corporations want to create a gap between demand and supply.
It is enough that we allocated you 200 employees, you can bring another 30% of the quota based on resumes from the countries with which there are no bilateral agreements.
And having said all that, the ball is out of our hands.
There is a gap between the price an employee pays and the price of flights.
We brought the money.
By April 4,000 workers from India will be able to enter here.
If direct immigration is the solution, we are in favor of it."
Regarding Palestinian workers, Morgenstern said, "The inclusion of Palestinians is a real need for the economy, and this is the only solution that is a quick solution.
But this should be done with the authorities, at the beginning of the war sites were also closed because of Israeli Arab workers.
There are tens of thousands of Palestinian workers working in Israel, without enforcement by the IDF and the police. Even if Palestinians come in, the foreign workers will stay here."
"This is a government that hurts itself, ministries fail other ministries"
At the opening of the event, Dan Kachanovski, CEO and owner of the real estate center, said, "In the real estate industry, each cycle of a project takes many years, therefore the uncertainty is a real threat.
I call on the government, and the Minister of Finance who will speak here tomorrow: establish a centralized housing cabinet that will include all necessary actions in the housing market;
A professional cabinet that will include all the factors related to the fields of planning and construction, the ministries of finance, construction and housing, transportation and the interior;
the local government and more.
Only in this way, things will start to move - we will see the arrival of workers to Israel;
incentive for urban renewal projects to reach the periphery;
Shortening bureaucratic processes and reducing planning uncertainty;
Building reasonable eligibility mechanisms that do not increase the gaps in society but really give help to those who need it."
Dan Kachanovski, Eilat Real Estate Center Conference 2024/Now Media
Raul Sargo, president of the Association of Contractors Building the Land, continued Kachanovsky's criticism and even strengthened it: "The Israeli government has failed colossally in bringing in foreign workers. You can give it a score of zero. If the people in the government were working in the private sector, they would have been fired a long time ago." said today the President of the Builders of the Land Contractors Association, Raul Sargo, at the Eilat 2024 Real Estate Center Conference. Sargo's words come against the background of a severe manpower crisis in the construction industry and the fact that almost half a year since the war began, only about a thousand foreign workers have arrived in Israel in total
. that harms itself, ministries fail other ministries. There is no management here. There are currently 20,000 people who have passed screening and they are waiting to come here. And they are not coming. I would have expected that the Minister of Finance, with the same determination to oppose the introduction of Palestinians to work in Israel, would have brought thousands of foreign workers here within two weeks ".
Raul Sargo/Nau Media
Regarding the Israeli public's concern about the entry of Palestinian workers into Israel, Sargo said, "I am not sure that the majority of the public is against the entry of Palestinian workers again. They say that the concept has been broken, and it is no longer possible to bring them to work, is it true? There are about 85,000 Palestinian workers who have worked here for many years and I do not remember In recent years, there have been incidents caused by those workers. There were rockets from Gaza, but there was silence from Palestinians who came to work. They are checked and did not carry out attacks. I receive this feedback from the MLA and the security establishment." However, he noted that as of today there is a lack of workers even if Palestinians are brought Back to work, we must not give up on bringing in tens of thousands of foreign workers at the same time: "We must not go back to depending only on them, on the Palestinians."
Einat Ganon, Urban Renewal Authority Eilat Real Estate Center Conference 2024/Now Media
"It is not possible for the developer to bear illogically high costs that ultimately come at the expense of the apartment owners," said Einat Ganon, vice president of the Urban Renewal Authority, in the panel on "Secrets from the Drawing Table", referring to the lawyers' fees.
Furthermore, Ganon noted that Soon, the Urban Renewal Authority is going to issue instructions to the municipal administrations to outline policies in the market, which will be published in the coming months. According to her, "The Authority makes sure to examine the financial strength of the entrepreneurs and proper conduct with the apartment owners, most of whom meet the criteria.
We were surprised to see that some companies do not meet the requirements for minimum experience for completed construction projects, and this creates quite a few problems with the apartment owners."
"The gap between demand and supply is not destiny"
"An emergency plan is needed at the national level to deal with the housing crisis," added Hanan Friedman, CEO of Bank Leumi, "in Israel there is a constant gap between demand and supply, regardless of the effects of the war.
He is not the decree of fate and is not a higher power.
It is the result of not making decisions over the years.
It can change quickly, if relatively simple decisions are made and these are carried out carefully and efficiently.
To this end, the government must declare the housing crisis as an emergency issue at the national level and formulate a long-term strategic plan.
It is necessary to invest in essential infrastructures, in order to bring the periphery and the satellite cities closer to the center, and no less important than that - to shorten the bureaucratic procedures, a sick evil that must be uprooted.
Everyone understands the devastating consequences of this intolerable procrastination.
Only an emergency plan, with a clear definition of goals, within reasonable time frames, based on data and performance indicators, can help us get out of the years-long crisis we are experiencing."
Gil Geva, chairman of the Tadhar Group, commented on the state of the industry and the war and said, "The business sector has nothing to wait for the state There is enormous power here, most of the workers in the economy are employed, there is an ability to lead and chart a course. That everyone behaves with real responsibility, we have been doing this since October 7th. Do not wait for a crisis. Alongside capitalism and competition there is room for closing gaps and moral conduct, all the good buds It is our job to take them out of the crisis."
Geva referred to the matter of industrialization and technologies in the real estate industry and said, "The industry as a whole is conservative and technology penetrates it slowly.
We are at a point of change, there is more technology coming in, the processes need to become digital.
When there is digitization there will be information and it will become value."
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