11 September 2026 — Tel Aviv Apartment Journal
From 1 January to 30 June 2026, Aviv’s first-half report — the first accounts published after the company issued bonds on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange on 24 June — records zero sales at Herbert Samuel. Group revenue from apartment sales fell from NIS 50 million to NIS 20 million. Net loss for the half: NIS 8.5 million. Management says the book is aimed mainly at non-residents and blames the security situation for keeping them away. The plot was bought for NIS 250 million. Completion is slated for December 2029.
A sale after 30 June would fall outside that report. It would not change the half-year fact: six blank months on the most expensive street in the country.
Sources: Aviv Group H1 2026 financial report, as reported by Calcalist / CTech, 31 August and 6 September 2026.
The backdrop: 9,725 unsold new homes — inside Tel Aviv
Herbert Samuel is not a one-off. At the end of July 2026 the Central Bureau of Statistics, cited by Globes on 10 September, put the stock of unsold new dwellings at:
| Area | Unsold new homes |
|---|---|
| Bat Yam | 5,057 |
| Haifa | 4,116 |
| Israel | ~85,000 |
That is a record. The Bank of Israel was already counting about 83,000–86,000 units at the end of 2025 — roughly 29 to 30 months of supply at the then-prevailing sales pace.
The wider Tel Aviv district holds about 30 percent of the national stock, on the order of 26,000 homes. The old line that “the overhang is in the periphery” no longer holds.
City prices, on market briefs aligned with CBS, are down about 3.5 percent year on year, while the Jerusalem district is still up. The gap between the two cities has opened.
Sources: CBS / Globes, 10 September 2026; Bank of Israel, Annual Report 2025, housing chapter.
What July actually says
The Finance Ministry’s July 2026 housing review stops the cartoon version of the story.
- 7,692 transactions in July (
Bat Yam 5,057 Haifa 4,116 Israel ~85,000 City prices, on market briefs aligned with CBS, are down about 3.5 percent year on year, while the Jerusalem district is still up. The gap between the two cities has opened.
Sources: CBS / Globes, 10 September 2026; Bank of Israel, Annual Report 2025, housing chapter.
What July actually says
The Finance Ministry’s July 2026 housing review stops the cartoon version of the story.
- 7,692 transactions in July (
Read it this way: the city is still absorbing volume. What it is no longer absorbing, or barely absorbing, is 2025-priced luxury, especially when the target buyer lives in Paris, London or New York and is pricing security risk and a strong shekel.
The Bank of Israel’s policy rate is back at 3.5 percent. Money is cheaper than a year ago. That is not enough to clear a thirty-month overhang, or to bring the seafront foreign buyer back.
Sources: Ministry of Finance, July 2026 housing review; CBS via Globes; Bank of Israel.
Luxury was already seizing up before Herbert Samuel
By spring 2026 Ynet was describing schemes “almost ready for occupancy” that were still half unsold — rare in Tel Aviv three years earlier.
- Weizmann 55 (Shikun & Binui): more than half of the 40 units still available weeks from handover; 2025 price per square metre already below 2024.
- Hagag Bavli: 16 sales in 202
So: negotiate — where, how much, how
Yes — on new high-end stock and the seafront.
A developer who has not closed a contract in six months is carrying cost: debt, VAT, marketing, site overhead. Lending to residential developers was already at NIS 69 billion by the end of 2025, up 40 percent in a year. Unsold inventory is no longer a brochure problem. It is a cash problem.Practical moves, without folklore:
- List price is not closing price. On Herbert Samuel and its peers, ask in writing for the 2025 deed file (price, floor, square metres) and bid below the last signed price per metre — not below the NIS 145,000 brochure.
- Stretch the terms if they will not cut the number. Deferred indexation, a smaller deposit at signing, parking or storage “included,” a year of arnona covered: those lines move faster than the headline price when a developer refuses to print a discount.
- Write the completion clause. December 2029 on Herbert Samuel is three years of risk. Delay penalties in shekels, not “best ef
What this piece is not
It is not a “ghost tower” in the 2011–2018 sense — foreign-owned flats dark ten months a year. Herbert Samuel is a scheme still being marketed that has stopped signing.
It is also not the 75-storey / 340-metre office tower planned at Yigal Alon on the former IMI plant: contaminated land, offices, still in the planning circuit (Globes, 10 September 2026).
In one line
Tel Aviv is still selling. 2025-priced Tel Aviv luxury is not. If you are buying a new high-end flat or a seafront unit, this is the moment to open the file, cite the deeds, and put a written offer under the brochure. If you are hunting 70 square metres in a tight central building, the balance of power has not moved: the seller still picks the buyer.
Sources
- Amitai Gazit, Calcalist / CTech, 31 August 2026 and 6 September 2026 — Herbert Samuel project, Aviv Group, H1 2026 report.
- Arik Mirovsky, Globes, 10 September 2026 — May–July sales and CBS stock (9,725 in Tel Aviv–Yafo; ~85,000 nationwide).
- Israel Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS), 2026 releases on dwellings in real-estate transactions.
- Ministry of Finance, monthly housing-market review, July 2026.
- Bank of Israel, Annual Report 2025, housing chapter (stock, months of supply).
- Ynet News, 12 May 2026 — Weizmann 55, Hagag Bavli, Yama / Sde Dov.
- Yuval Nisani, Globes, 10 September 2026 — IMI / Yigal Alon tower (non-residential; cited only to keep the files apart).
Shekel figures are those in the documents cited, at the stated closing dates. They are not an offer.
Editorial published by Tel Aviv Apartment, Rehov Ezrat Yisrael 8, Jerusalem. The agency lets and sells property in the city, including in the Herbert Samuel / seafront belt. This article is not personalised investment advice. Check every figure against the company filing, the CBS and your lawyer before you bid.
forts.”
- Do not apply this to the whole city. A three-room flat in a sought-after older building, in a street where Yad2 listings vanish in ten days, is not Herbert Samuel. Shaving 8 percent off that asking price because “CBS says 9,725” is a misread of the data.
No — this is not the moment to dump a scarce central pied-à-terre, and 9,725 unsold units are not 9,725 bargains. Part of the stock is badly located, oversized, overpriced, or still on the plans. The headline number is not a sale catalogue.
5 against 52 in 2024.
- Yama / Sde Dov (Y.H. Dimri): 32 sales since launch, but NIS 6,000/m² below the prior year-end price.
Herbert Samuel is the point at which the silence became public, because Aviv now files accounts.
Source: Ynet News, 12 May 2026.
new and second-hand), down 4 percent year on year.
- Excluding subsidised units: 6,582 — one of the weakest free-market Julys since the early 2000s.
- Developer sales outside government discount programmes: down 22 percent from June.
- At the same time, May–July was still the quarter in which Tel Aviv led the country in sales: 1,730 homes, of which 1,157 were new.
That is a record. The Bank of Israel was already counting about 83,000–86,000 units at the end of 2025 — roughly 29 to 30 months of supply at the then-prevailing sales pace.
The wider Tel Aviv district holds about 30 percent of the national stock, on the order of 26,000 homes. The old line that “the overhang is in the periphery” no longer holds.
new and second-hand), down 4 percent year on year.
- 7,692 transactions in July (
- Excluding subsidised units: 6,582 — one of the weakest free-market Julys since the early 2000s.
- Developer sales outside government discount programmes: down 22 percent from June.
- At the same time, May–July was still the quarter in which Tel Aviv led the country in sales: 1,730 homes, of which 1,157 were new.
Tel Aviv luxury has lost its automatic bid. An 18-storey tower on Herbert Samuel recorded no sales in the first half of 2026. The city itself is sitting on 9,725 unsold new homes. That is not a crash. It is a shift in bargaining power — if you know where to use it.
Exhibit A: Herbert Samuel
The Aviv Group and Lenny Group project on the seafront — 50 apartments — is the cleanest case study in the market.
Through the end of 2025 the scheme still cleared at the top of Israeli luxury: 20 sales for a combined NIS 214 million, or almost NIS 11 million a unit. Average price per square metre moved from NIS 128,000 to NIS 145,000 on the ten deals closed in 2025. In November 2025 a tenth-floor apartment still sold for NIS 58 million.
Then the market stopped.