For most of us, buying an apartment, or investing in real estate at all, is a one-time, exciting, deeply significant moment in life. It's the first step toward what everyone is looking for in a "home": a place to raise children, enjoy time together, grow old together and build countless memories.
Alongside the emotional investment comes a very large financial one, probably one of the biggest you will ever make. That combination of excitement and expense puts real pressure on first-time buyers, and once you add every well-meaning advice-giver into the mix, you get a recipe for chaos.
Buying for the first time is hard to simplify: there's a lot to learn, many professionals to consult, and a string of tasks that won't let up until you've actually bought something.
Buying an apartment is still the simpler path, since building on land brings building permits and approvals from the authorities into play, adding another layer of complexity.
Either way, watch for technical defects that make a purchase not worth it: defects you simply can't and shouldn't try to fix on the cheap, because it won't work. A home inspection (bedek bayit) can catch these before you commit.
It consists of a system of checks and tests performed by a licensed, specialized engineer using dedicated equipment, meant to assess the property as thoroughly as possible and produce, at the end, a professional report describing its condition.
If a home inspection of the property turns up any of the following, walk away and keep looking:
- Structural defects: poor construction and inadequate wall reinforcement produce wide diagonal cracks on both sides of a wall. Fixing them means cutting into the walls and inserting new reinforcement bars, at a cost of ₪60,000 to ₪120,000, with no guarantee the problem won't return even after the repair.
- Wall cladding: cladding attached with adhesive alone will eventually come loose on the building's exterior. If the engineer's home inspection turns up a failure like this, it's best not to buy the apartment: re-cladding costs hundreds of thousands of shekels, and leaving it undone risks lives, from falling tiles or a full collapse.
- Floor swelling and sinking: homes over three years old with flooring laid without a concrete slab tend to develop swelling and sinking in the ground-floor flooring. Fixing it means lifting the entire floor, pouring new concrete, installing a new plumbing system and laying new flooring on top, at a cost of ₪80,000 to ₪120,000.
- Cracked concrete beams: wide diagonal cracks at the base of the house's walls, usually near the beams, point to an extremely serious failure that can cost up to ₪250,000 to fix, and isn't always repairable at all. Steer clear of apartments like this.
The market is tough, but don't give up too quickly, and don't skip a full home inspection before committing to any property.
The engineers of Arad Bedek Bayit, led by building engineer Ron Arad, whom courts appoint as their own expert on construction defects. The company has been inspecting apartments and buildings since 2001. Engineer Ron Arad · More about the company