What we do

1. Price vetting

The first question, and the one with the least reliable answer when you are buying from abroad. There is no Israeli MLS. The broker showing you the unit is paid by the seller. The brochure number is a marketing number, not a market number.

We pull the last 12–18 months of closed deals from Rashut HaMisim (the Israel Tax Authority's public residential transaction database) within roughly 500 meters of the target building, filtered to the buildings actually comparable. We adjust each comp for floor, view, parking, machsan (storage), mamad (safe room) layout, finish level, and building age — building a normalized per-meter number, not a raw one. For new construction, we cross-reference the contractor's project sales ledger where available, Madad-adjusted to a single base date so the numbers actually compare.

Then we form an opinion: above market, at market, or below market, and by how much. Sometimes the answer is “fair, but you should be looking three streets over.” That is also a deliverable.

2. Contractor vetting

For new construction, the contractor (kablan) is the counterparty you are trusting with money over a 24–36 month build. “Reputable” is a category, not a grade. Reputable contractors in Israel still vary widely on delivery timing, on quality of finish, on how aggressively they price change orders, and on how they handle defects after handover.

We look at the actual track record: prior projects delivered, delay history, registration status with the relevant regulators, financial stability indicators that are publicly available, and pattern of issues with past buyers where the record exists. We also confirm the bank guarantee (arvut bankai'it) structure and the Sale Law (Chok Mecher Diro) protections are in place — the Israeli system protects buyers who have done it correctly, and the buyers who get hurt are usually the ones who paid outside the guarantee structure.

3. Contract red-flagging — before the lawyer

Your real estate lawyer (orech din) papers the deal, registers it at the Tabu (land registry), and handles the legal mechanics. Critically, their job is the legal side. They are not benchmarking the indexation clause against the market, or flagging that the payment schedule is front-loaded relative to construction progress, or noticing that the delivery date is written in a way that gives the contractor a soft six-month grace.

We read the contract before it gets to the lawyer, focused on the commercial terms: Madad linkage (cap, base date, milestones), payment schedule, delivery date and grace periods, penalty clauses for late delivery, change-order pricing, and the specific Sale Law and bank guarantee mechanics. The lawyer then does the legal vetting on a cleaner draft, and you do not pay for legal hours spent re-litigating commercial choices that should have been decided up front.

4. FX and money-transfer guidance

This is the single highest-leverage decision in the entire transaction and the one most Americans make on autopilot. On a typical US-bank-to-Israeli-bank wire, the all-in spread plus fees runs 2–4% of the transferred amount. On a half-million-dollar purchase, that is $10,000–$20,000 of pure friction that simply evaporates between your account and the seller's.

Licensed Israeli FX houses — regulated, reportable, fully legal — typically quote spreads in the range of 0.3%–0.7%, with the exchange rate disclosed on the ticket before you commit. We walk you through how the transfer should be structured, which documentation the Israeli bank will demand (US bank statements showing the funds accumulated, plus matching excerpts from your tax returns), and how to stage the conversion so a single bad day on the rate doesn't reset your budget.

5. Non-resident mortgage reality check

Israeli banks lend to non-residents, but the structural defaults are different from a US mortgage. Loan-to-value is typically capped around 50% (sometimes up to 60%), meaning you'll need 40–50% of the purchase price as cash up front. Fewer banks participate in the non-resident market, so the effective choice is narrower. Documentation is heavier because of anti-money-laundering compliance — US tax returns, source-of-funds explanation, sometimes a US CPA letter.

We give you the realistic picture of what is available to your profile, which banks are worth approaching, and what an Israeli mortgage advisor (yo'etz mashkanta'ot) actually does. Most importantly: we get this honest before you've identified a specific property, so the budget you are shopping with is the budget you can actually finance.

6. Purchase tax (mas rechisha) exposure

The largest single line item on the closing statement, and the one most often glossed over in the initial pitch. Non-residents and second-home buyers do not get the zero bracket that Israeli residents buying their only home receive. For a non-resident, tax starts at the first shekel, with rates beginning around 8% and rising for higher-value properties. On a $500,000 apartment, that is roughly $40,000.

We model your specific mas rechisha exposure under the current brackets, flag any oleh status or first-home benefits that might apply to your situation, and build the number into the all-in budget rather than letting it surface as a surprise inside the 60-day filing window. Brackets shift periodically — the Knesset adjusts them — so we verify with the rates in effect at the date you actually sign.

7. Quarterbacking the full team

Even a clean deal has four or five people on the Israeli side: the lawyer, the mortgage advisor, the inspector (bedek bayit), the property manager if it is an investment unit, and the FX house. From the US, with a time-zone gap and a language gap, keeping all of them aligned is its own job.

We coordinate the team on your behalf. One point of contact, translating the Israeli side back into plain English, surfacing the decisions that actually require your input, and holding the timeline accountable so things don't drift in the weeks you can't be on the phone in Hebrew. The goal is that you make the decisions that are yours to make — and don't get pulled into the dozen logistical ones that aren't.