It usually arrives late, and it usually arrives described as housekeeping.
The contract has been agreed in principle. The buyer is in London or New Jersey, the developer’s office is in Tel Aviv, and somebody needs to be able to sign things. An email comes across with three or four attachments, one of which is a power of attorney, and a covering note explaining that this is standard, that everyone signs one, and that the office cannot proceed with the registration steps without it. The tone is administrative. The buyer signs it because it looks like the sort of thing you sign.
It is the most consequential page in the bundle, and we send it back roughly as often as we receive it.
What the instrument actually is
A power of attorney is an authority to act in your name. In an Israeli property transaction that authority is unavoidable if you are not standing in the country: somebody has to sign the purchase agreement, lodge documents with the tax authority, deal with the accompanying bank, attend the land registry and effect the registration in your name. Where the authority extends to dealings in land, Israeli practice requires it to be executed before a notary — and where it is signed abroad, to be certified in a form Israel will accept, which for most of our clients’ countries means an apostille under the Hague Convention of 1961, followed by a certified Hebrew translation.
None of that is unusual and none of it is a workaround. Israeli property changes hands under powers of attorney every working day. The question is never whether to grant one. The question is to whom, for what, and until when.
The two documents people confuse
There is a legitimate instrument in Israeli conveyancing called an irrevocable power of attorney — yipui koach bilti chozer — and its ordinary use is by a seller, in favour of the buyer’s lawyer, so that the buyer’s registration can be completed later without the seller having to reappear years afterwards. That document is a protection for the purchaser. It is one of the things a good lawyer secures on your behalf.
What arrives in a foreign buyer’s inbox from a developer’s office is a different animal wearing similar clothing. It is a buyer’s power of attorney, granted to the developer’s own lawyer or to a person nominated by them, and it is drafted by the party sitting on the other side of the transaction.
The confusion between the two is not accidental. When a buyer asks whether powers of attorney are normal in Israel, the honest answer is yes — and that honest answer is frequently used to close a conversation that ought to have continued.
What a broadly drafted one permits
Read the scope clause of a developer’s standard form and you will often find, in some combination:
No named transaction. Authority to act “in connection with the property” or “in respect of the apartment,” rather than in respect of one identified purchase, on one identified contract, with one identified counterparty.
No expiry. An authority that continues after the keys are handed over, after registration, and after the relationship has ended.
A power of substitution. The ability for the named attorney to appoint somebody else in their place — which means the person ultimately holding the authority is not the person you granted it to, and may not be someone you have ever heard of.
Authority to deal with, not merely acquire. Wording broad enough to encompass mortgaging, charging, or in some forms disposing of the property. Buyers assume a purchase power of attorney can only be used to purchase. Nothing in the nature of the document makes that so; only the drafting does.
Authority to receive and direct funds. The single clause we object to most often. Money and authority should not sit in the same pair of hands, and certainly not in the counterparty’s hands.
No approval gate. Nothing requiring your written confirmation of final terms before the contract is signed on your behalf. The practical effect is that the terms you discussed and the terms executed need never have been the same terms.
Is any of this fraudulent? Almost never. It is a document drafted by a lawyer whose client is the developer, to make the developer’s process frictionless, and it does exactly that. The buyer is simply not the person it was written for.
The conflict, stated plainly
Set the drafting aside for a moment. The structural point is simpler than any clause.
In a new-build purchase, the lawyer at whose desk you sit is very often the developer’s lawyer. Foreign buyers routinely believe this person acts for them, because this person handed them a contract, explained it patiently, and was pleasant about it. They do not act for you. They are not required to advise you. When your interest and the developer’s interest diverge — over the delay provisions, over the specification, over what happens if the accompanying bank changes its position — they have one client, and it is not you.
Granting that person authority to sign in your name is not a matter of trust in their character. It is a matter of structure. We would decline it in respect of a lawyer we admired.
The six clauses we insist on
When Altitude Privé acts, the power of attorney is prepared by our own counsel, for the buyer, and it contains — at minimum — the following.
One named transaction. The property, the project, the developer, the contract. Authority in respect of that purchase, and nothing else.
Enumerated acts. A closed list of what may be done: execute the purchase agreement, file the purchase tax declaration, correspond with the accompanying bank, lodge the warning note, effect registration. If an act is not on the list, it is not authorised.
A ceiling. A maximum price and payment structure that may be committed. Authority to sign is not authority to agree any number.
An approval gate. Written confirmation from the buyer of the final agreed terms before signature. This is the clause that turns a power of attorney from a blank cheque into an execution mechanism.
An expiry. A defined period, after which the instrument is spent. Registration timelines in Israel can be long, so the period is set with that in mind — but it is set.
No substitution. The authority is personal to the named attorney and may not be delegated onward.
Add to those a seventh, which is negative: no authority to receive purchase funds. Payments go where the statutory protection lies, which is a subject in its own right and one we have written about separately.
The test, if you take nothing else
Read the scope clause. If you cannot state in a single sentence what the document permits and the date on which it stops permitting it, do not sign it — and that applies whoever is representing you, including firms that are not us.
Executing it from where you are
The mechanics are more forgiving than buyers expect, and the timing less so.
You will attend a notary in your own city, with identification, and sign in their presence. In Hague Convention states — the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Australia, South Africa and most of Europe — the notarised document is then apostilled by the designated authority, which in England and Wales is the Legalisation Office. A certified Hebrew translation follows. In some cases buyers prefer to sign at an Israeli consulate, which can remove the apostille step where the consulate offers the service; whether that is faster depends entirely on the appointment book at your consulate, which in several cities is the longest lead time in the whole exercise.
Two practical points. First, the wording must be correct before you attend, because a defective instrument discovered in Israel means the entire cycle again from your side of the world, and by then a payment date may be running. Second, build the whole sequence into the transaction timetable at the outset rather than discovering it at the deadline. A fortnight is typical. It is not always a fortnight.
What we do when the form arrives
We read it, we say no, and we send our own. In our experience developers accept a properly drawn buyer’s power of attorney without much argument, because their objection was never principled — the form was offered because it is easier, and it stops being easier the moment somebody reads it.
If the developer will not accept a limited instrument, that refusal is itself information, and it is worth more than anything in the brochure.
This post describes general practice and is not legal advice. Requirements for notarisation, legalisation and translation differ by jurisdiction and change; your own counsel should confirm the position that applies to you.
