You are making a life here, not a purchase.
Most of our clients came to us through the aliyah itself, and the property conversation arrived later — usually in the second year, sometimes in the fifth. This page is what we would tell you at the beginning of that arc, before anyone shows you anything.
Rent first. We will say it before you ask.
Almost every family who buys within their first six months buys in the wrong place. Not a bad apartment — usually a good one, at a fair price, on the wrong street for the family they turn out to be.
The school changes. The commute proves impossible in a way that no map predicted. The community is warm, and is not quite theirs. The shul is fifteen minutes further than fifteen minutes should be on a Friday in August. None of this is knowable from abroad, and very little of it is knowable in month three.
The country arrives.
Neighbourhoods reveal themselves on foot, and rarely as the brochure described them. Walk a street on a Friday afternoon and again on a Tuesday morning before you decide anything about it.
The life settles.
The school run finds its rhythm. The shul becomes a walk rather than a drive. The community stops being the one you imagined and becomes the one that is actually yours.
The purchase begins.
Only then does the right home come into focus, and the conversation begins in earnest — from knowledge rather than from hope, and with a brief that describes a real life rather than an imagined one.
We will happily wait a year, or three. We would very much rather wait than be the office that sold you the wrong street.
The questions that actually decide it.
We ask these before we ask about budget, because they determine far more of the answer than the number does.
- i.Where is the school — and where will the school be when the youngest is fourteen?
- ii.How far is the shul, on foot, in August?
- iii.Which community is yours: the one you imagine, or the one that is actually there?
- iv.Who is commuting, and to where, and how often?
- v.Where do the grandparents land, and how long do they stay?
- vi.Is this ten years, or is this forever?
- vii.And when you picture the Friday table — whose apartment is it in?
Answered honestly, these narrow the search faster than any filter on any portal. They also tend to be the questions nobody has asked you since you decided to come.
What is genuinely different about buying here.
None of it is difficult. All of it is unfamiliar, and all of it is expensive to learn late.
The contract is Hebrew.
It is drafted in Hebrew, binding in Hebrew, and interpreted in Hebrew. An English translation is a courtesy, not the agreement. Whatever you are told across the desk, the document is the deal.
Tax turns on timing.
Purchase tax treatment depends on your residency status, on whether this will be your only home in Israel, and on when you buy relative to your aliyah. The benefits available to olim have been reformed in recent years — they are not what your cousin paid a decade ago. This is worked through with counsel before you commit, because the sequence of the purchase can change what is payable.
Mortgages are not automatic.
Terms differ sharply between residents and non-residents, and arriving as an oleh does not make you a resident for lending purposes on the day you land. Lenders will want to understand income earned abroad, and the file takes longer than it would at home.
Rooms are counted differently.
A four-room apartment is not a four-bedroom apartment. The count includes the living room, and the mamad is frequently counted among the rest. Comparing Israeli listings to what you left behind will mislead you in both directions.
The mamad is not optional.
New construction includes a reinforced room, and in older stock its presence or absence is one of the first things worth establishing. For most families arriving now, it is not a preference.
An off-plan price is a starting figure.
New-build contracts are linked to the Construction Inputs Index, so the sum finally payable can exceed the price you agreed. Budget for it, and negotiate how it is applied before you sign rather than discovering it at handover.
Every item here is ordinary to an Israeli buyer and invisible to a new one. That gap is most of what the office exists to close.
If you are still at the beginning, start there.
Altitude Privé is one of three offices under common ownership. Many of our clients are known to us long before they buy — which is why, by the time the purchase conversation arrives, the search does not start from nothing.
The established Anglo concierge to the aliyah process. Nefesh B’Nefesh, Misrad HaKlita and Bituach Leumi, the schools, the banks, and the first-year rental — the year in which a family works out where it actually belongs.
→ easyaliyah.comFor those establishing residency, business and life in Israel ahead of, or without, the citizenship decision. Residency permits, company formation, banking, schools, and the logistics of a life held between two countries.
→ israelicitizenship.comThe residential office, which holds the purchase conversation when it arrives. We will be here in year two.
You are hereWherever you are in it, begin with a conversation.
Still abroad and working out where to look. A year in and starting to think about it. Or holding a contract you have been asked to sign this week. Tell us where you are — we do not ask for particulars in advance, and there is no stage that is too early.
Arrange A ConversationLicensed brokerage · Israel real estate licence no. 326165
Altitude Privé is a buyer’s agent for purchasers of new and off-plan residential property across Israel. Licensed brokerage, licence no. 326165. Correspondence is welcomed in confidence.
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A quiet conversation, at the time and place that suits you. We come to you where we can.
Altitude Privé acts for buyers across Israel — from Ramat Beit Shemesh to the Sharon, from Netanya to Jerusalem. One office, one side of the table.
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