Price is the result of supply versus demand, everyone knows that.
The question is what is the government doing to curb the rise in prices?
She has two choices: lower demand, or increase supply.
The first option is stupid and vicious, the second requires daring - a war on a golem built on its creator.
The fact that emerges from the CBS data is that supply reaches 82% of demand in the last quarter. The even more problematic figure is that this is a trend - a jump of 32% from the first quarter of the year. They must go up - we said, everyone knows that when demand exceeds supply in a trending and continuous way prices go up.
Another problem is that this trend is also causing a slowdown in demand.
Yes, even this high and rising demand does not express the real demand, because many of the potential buyers prefer not to make the deal in this rising market - it is too stressful for them.
Similarly, job search data does not reflect the true number of job seekers, because there are desperate people who are no longer looking - and not because they do not want to, they have simply internalized the negative message from the search.
Normally, the state, especially our state, should encourage demand for apartments, not suppress it.
It should not only increase supply, but encourage marketing beyond supply, in order to meet the promise in the Declaration of Independence to serve as a home for the Jewish people.
In many cases, the possibility of purchasing an apartment in Israel is the first step on the way to immigration, so the supply here is more important than in other countries.
This is without mentioning the state's revenue from construction, and construction as an engine of growth in general.