The Business news magazine BusinessWeek praised Israel’s real estate market, calling it one of the best performers in the world and forecasting that home prices would continue to rise. The report - Housing Market 2012 - noted that despite the economic slowdown and the unemployment rate, home prices in Israel still rose 1.5 percent.
Low interest rates on mortgages and a shortage of 10,000 apartments were credited with fueling the price increase. In Modiin, Israel’s fastest growing city, the average price of a four-room apartment rose 10 percent since the beginning of the year to $275,000.