Bethel Finance: Home sales jump 30% in December

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Bethel Finance news:
1,935 new apartments were sold in December 2011, 30% more than in November, but 15% fewer than in December 2010, the Central Bureau of Statistics reported today. New home sales fell to 19,000 in 2011 from 22,600 in 2010, while the housing inventory rose 33% to 20,000 at the end of 2011 from a year earlier.

Jerusalem saw the largest slump in new apartment sales in a year-on-year comparison - 41%, from 2,417 apartments in 2010 to 1,415 apartments in 2010.

Housing demand - new home sales plus housing starts for homes not for sale - totaled 3,180 housing units in December, of which 1,244 were for the owners' use, buyers groups, and build-your-own home projects. Housing demand was 20% higher than in November, but housing demand in 2011 fell 6% compared with 2010.

The largest housing demand in 2011 - 1,120 apartments - was in Tel Aviv. Conversely, housing demand fell 37% in Ashdod and Petah Tikva, compared with 2010.

Belying the government's efforts to divert housing demand to the periphery, 35% of the national housing demand was in central Israel in 2011, and demand fell in all districts except for Tel Aviv, where it rose by 6% over 2010, and in Judea and Samaria, where it rose 16% following the building freeze in 2010.

43% of the housing inventory at the end of 2011 was in the Central District, 21% was in the Southern District, 12% in the Tel Aviv District, 11% in the Jerusalem District, 7% in the Haifa District, and 5% in the Northern District. The housing inventory rose 108% from the end of 2010 in the Southern District, 43% in the Haifa District, 37% in the Central District, 11% in the Northern and Jerusalem Districts, and 5% in the Tel Aviv District.

The national housing inventory is sufficient for 14 months at the current rate of sales. The inventory is sufficient for 23 months in the Southern District, 14 months in the Jerusalem District, 13% months in the Tel Aviv and Central districts, 11 months in the Haifa District, and eight months in the Northern District.