"Your lease is about to expire next month. If you are interested in continuing to rent the apartment, let us know that the rent will be updated to NIS 9,500. This rent is only if you are interested in continuing to rent, because realtors have already contacted me for a higher amount."
When A. from the central area, married and the father of three children, received this message at the beginning of the week, he thought to himself that this was an excessive attempt on the part of the landlord to make his family pay more.
However, when he inquired about the rental prices in his neighborhood, he was surprised to find that the landlord did not exaggerate at all, and it was even fair that he demanded an additional NIS 1,000 a month and no more.
About a third of households that have not been able to purchase an apartment and live in a rented home have recently received notifications from apartment owners demanding an increase in rent.
The publication of the housing price index, which has jumped more than 16% in the past year, gives impetus to these requests.
The problem is that the peak in rental prices is probably still ahead of us, and apartment tenants will experience the painful blow in the pocket later on, because the rise in apartment prices is ahead of the trends in the rental market at least a year.
Beyond that, the wave of immigration from Russia and Ukraine will add pressure to demand in the rental market.
And back to A. from the central area.
A. decided to stay in his apartment, but the addition of 1,000 shekels a month will prevent him from saving equity to buy an apartment - so raising the rental price further distances him from the apartment's dream.
It should be said that this is another reasonable addition, which constitutes "only" 12%, when in quite a few cases the apartment owners take advantage of the wave of price increases and demand increases at a much higher rate.
The government seems to be ignoring the current wave of rising prices that about a third of households are experiencing - those who failed to get on the real estate train in time and did not buy their own apartment. Decision makers continue to repeat the constant mantra Doing enough to make it easier for citizens.
An increase of thousands of shekels a month in the rental price for a family with children is dramatic, and in many cases it is a difference that will determine whether the family manages to "close" the month or enters the minus with no choice.
While rents are soaring by tens of percent, the average wage in the economy remains unchanged.
The Central Bureau of Statistics provided us with the following amazing data: The average wage per employee in February 2022 was NIS 12,052 compared to NIS 12,062 in February 2021. How will A. and others pay the rent increase, the fuel price increase and the cost of the basket at the supermarket?
Will they increase the minus?
Will they move to an apartment farther from the center in exchange for standing in traffic jams for about two hours a day in order to get to work?
While decision-makers are taking care of rescuing the fragile coalition, public outrage is growing.
The great social protest that took place in Israel a decade ago began, we will recall, as a popular consumer protest against high housing and food prices.
Were we wrong?
Fixed!
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