10,040 winners of the "Discounted Apartment" raffle will receive a notification announcing their winnings during Sunday.
The rest of the registrants, who failed to win this round, will receive a notice inviting them to register for the second lottery in the program, for which registration will open at the end of June.
Israel Today has learned that 5,500 to 6,000 apartments in the cities of Ramat Gan, Haifa, Jerusalem, Elad, Ashdod, Ashkelon, Arad, Netanya and Eilat will be raffled off among the participants in the second round.
"I do not want to give recommendations to people, but if I were a young couple eligible in the State of Israel, I would carefully consider whether it is right to buy an apartment or be part of the lottery and win a discount of about NIS 700,000," says the director of the Ministry of Construction. And housing, Aviad Friedman, "in their place I would not run to buy an apartment in the free market today."
The first lottery, it will be recalled, was characterized by unprecedented demand: close to 120,000 households registered for a lottery of only about 10,000 apartments.
The number of apartments that can be grilled in the coming year stands at at least 30,000 (of which 10,000 have already been drawn).
This number is based on tenders that have already been closed and those that are intended to be closed according to the work plans of the Ministry of Construction and Housing and the Israel Land Authority.
According to the decision of the Israel Lands Council, the percentage of apartments intended for the lottery ranges from 60% to 65% of the total number of apartments that have been marketed and will be marketed in target price tenders.
Director General of the Ministry of Construction and Housing, Aviad Friedman, Photo: Miri Shimonevich, GPO
If the ministers in charge of the housing market (Lieberman, Elkin and Shaked) decide to increase the rate of apartments intended for lotteries, thus reducing the number of apartments intended for the free market, it will also be possible to reach higher numbers of lotteries.
However, such a decision has not yet been formally made, and even if it is, it must first come up for discussion in the Council for approval.
"Contractors are not an enemy"
In addition to increasing the number of apartments raffled off, and as part of the state's efforts to make it easier for young couples to purchase a first apartment, the Ministry of Housing and Construction last week, at the initiative of Commissioner Zeev Elkin, published the Sale Law memorandum.
According to the ministry, the law will save apartment buyers hundreds of thousands of shekels.
After the period of public comments, the law will reach debates in the Knesset, and will then be discussed by the Finance Committee headed by MK Alex Kushnir.
Immediately upon the publication of the memorandum, the law was harshly criticized by the contractors, who argued that the initiative would further raise apartment prices.
The contractors say that "not linking the price of land to the index of construction inputs will lead to the calculation of the risk of rising land prices within housing prices, that is, to rising housing prices."
They added that "the regulation that imposes additional penalties and fines for late delivery of apartments, will lead to contractors not taking a risk when they have to deal with situations beyond their control when the regulators do not meet the required response times."
To our question, whether the contractors' claim that they would raise the prices of the apartments to compensate for the non-linkage of the price of the land and the contractor's profits, the director general of the firm Friedman replied: "The answer is in the middle.
The contractor will sell the apartment at the highest price he can, because it is a market.
Even when the Ministry of Agriculture lowers the caps, some goes to the profits of the companies and some goes to the consumers. "
"The law increases the certainty for young couples who are about to buy an apartment. Today, when people buy an apartment, there is a huge knowledge gap between the buyer and the seller. The buyers do not know how much they are going to pay in the end. A buyer thinks he buys an apartment for two million shekels At the end of 2.3 million. The contractor's profit clings to the construction input index, does that make sense to you? ".
Friedman makes it clear that "contractors are not our enemy."
He says he wants "the contractors to build. I want them to make great money. I do not want to suppress their entrepreneurship, on the contrary. I just want to take care of the eligible ones."
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