Israel’s property is going sky high: Tel Aviv’s Meier-on-Rothschild tower is a symbol of the city’s rapidly-growing residential market

The ancient 3,000-year old city of Tel Aviv, which was built during the Ottoman Empire, with its stone houses and narrow streets, is transforming rapidly into one of the most progressive and international destinations on the planet. 

 

With an international, young, and stylish crowd, Israel’s largest metropolitan city has a record-breaking number of tech start-ups, attracting more venture capital dollars per-capita than any other country in the world. Intel employs almost 10,000 people in Israel joining Google, IBM and Microsoft who all have research and development centres in the vast metropolis.  

 

 

And it’s closer than you think; only a five hour flight away, it’s a vibrant and multi-cultural city, popular with tourists and Israelis alike, all of whom add to the energy and buzz of a booming food, art and design scene. Tel Aviv is also Israel’s most crowded city, with an average of 7,552 people per sqkm compared to the capital, Jerusalem, which has 5,750 per sqkm.  Add to that a growing tech industry and you almost have a housing crisis as bad as London’s on your hands.  

 

 

This rise in population has led to the construction of a number of luxury residential towers to accommodate current and new residents. With a total population of 414,600, the challenge for new buyers is acute in Tel Aviv, where local purchasers compete with overseas investors – sounding familiar? But what’s surprising about the Meier-on-Rothschild tower – aside from the hefty prices its apartments command –  is its location slap bang in the heart of the tree-lined Parisian-style, Rothschild Boulevard. Built purely to address the lack of quality housing in the city’s cramped living conditions, the 42-storey tower dominates everything around it. 

 

 

“The market is booming,” says local broker Daniel Knobil, “property prices are growing and new-build apartment blocks are selling up fast. The market is being fuelled largely by international buyers looking to invest in or relocate to Tel Aviv.” And the numbers back up the hype. In the last five years, Tel Aviv’s residential market has grown by 75.4 per cent. Currently, 85 per cent of tower is sold, racking up total sales figures of over £165m.

 

The 590ft high glass, steel and white aluminium clad tower, which has a mix of two to eight bedroom apartments and penthouses, is surrounded by enough hip eateries  and bars to make even a bearded Shoreditch hipster drool. But it has one up on east London with a cosmopolitan beachside location that basks in the sun nine months of the year.