Tel Aviv 4th most expensive city on Airbnb

Sunbathing in Tel Aviv or hitting Dubai’s fabulous malls will set you back a bit more lately. A combination of high hotel and apartment costs and strong tourism has Airbnb rates in some Middle Eastern cities among the world’s priciest.

In the latest Bloomberg index, Miami and Boston took the top two spots in the average daily cost of lodging in private dwellings for the second straight year. Airbnb owners asked for $205 a night and $195 a night, respectively, in the two cities. However, the Middle East has been climbing in the annual index and this year has five destinations among the top 15 priciest global cities: Tel Aviv and Dubai at Nos. 4 and 5, and Jerusalem, Riyadh and Kuwait City also near the top.

Dubai’s expensive short-term rentals, averaging $185 a night in Bloomberg’s index, probably are a function of high hotel rates in the Emirati city, where more than 70 percent of hotel rooms are four-star or above, said Ivana Gazivoda Vucinic of the international real estate firm Chestertons. Dubai’s supply of Airbnb units more than doubled to 3,249 units in the two years ended August 2017, following a relaxing of government regulations, according to Vucinic’s research on Dubai’s short-term rental market.

Dubai has spent billions to pump up its tourism sector and hopes to attract 20 million visitors to the city by 2020, up from 15.8 million visitors last year, according to figures from Dubai’s Department of Tourism and Commerce Marketing. Two U.A.E.-sponsored airlines, Emirates and Etihad Airways PJSC, have been among the world’s fastest-growing carriers in recent years. Should Dubai reach the 20 million visitor goal, it will be among the top five most visited cities globally, according to market research firm Euromonitor.

Pricey Airbnb listings in Israel may have more to do with the high cost of housing in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, said Yoav Kerner, a lecturer of statistics at Ben-Gurion University in Israel. Apartments in Tel Aviv typically eat up at least three-quarters of the average person’s gross income, said Kerner, who studied the Airbnb market in Tel Aviv on behalf of a hoteliers group.

5 years later Tel Aviv promenade upgrade finalized

Started more than 5 years ago, the renovation of the Tayelet in Tel Aviv has now finally reached the southern part of the city, across from the Royal Beach hotel. With the removal of  the old Dolphinarium having finally started last month, it's now a question of months until the promenade upgrade is now fully completed, allowing tourists and residents alike to stroll along the sea from Bat Yam all the way to Herzliya.

Since its inception in the late 1930’s, the central promenade of Tel Aviv played a key role in establishing the ever-changing connection between the city and its shore. In all of the various phases of its life, whether the modest walkway of the 1930’s, the neglected site of the 1960’s, or the renovated version of the 1980’s, the elevated boardwalk acted as a border that blocked the natural pedestrian flow between the city and its beach. The renovation project aimed to transform this historical blockade by creating a new continuous interface that enables free pedestrian flow to and from the sandy beach, throughout the city’s central waterfront. Moreover, serving as the main waterfront public space of the entire metropolitan area, the new promenade and its sitting-terraces was designed to offer a generous array of seats and relaxation opportunities along the seafront, in order to host great many new visitors, and create a hospitable and lively public domain for this large dense urban area.

Dolphinarium demolition has now started!

Demolition of the Dolphinarium building on the southern Tel Aviv beachfront began this week. The round building designed by architect Nahum Zolotov and opened in the early 1980s was an important Tel Aviv icon. People originally came to see the trained dolphin shows, followed by an event hall and dance club that became famous as the site of a terrorist attack in 2001. The building has since been semi-abandoned; it served mainly as a surfing club, while the beach on its northern side ("Drums Beach") was used for community gatherings by "spiritual" musicians and dancers.

A still unfinished real estate, planning, and legal saga lies behind the demolition. The Dolphinarium was built at the initiative of businessperson Zvi Efron with financing from South African investors on land leased from Israel Land Authority (ILA). In 1989, German businessperson Josef Buchmann bought the lot for $5 million. 20 years ago, when the Tel Aviv municipality wanted to open the beachfront to the public and continue the promenade there without interference, it signed an agreement with Buchmann's company, Sha'ar L'Israel, for an exchange of land. Buchmann was to have given the Dolphinarium site to the municipality in exchange for 12 dunam (three acres) on the east side of Herbert Samuel Street. Buchmann sold the new site to a group of developers in 2015.

The new plan gives the developers rights to construct 48,000 square meters of hotel, residential, and commercial space; up to 26,500 square meters of above-ground service space; and 36,000 square meters of underground parking space. Construction of a building with 250 square meters on the public space will be allowed. Objections to the plan were filed by the Movement for Quality Government, the Adam Teva V'Din non-profit organization, and representatives of the residents, who claimed that the developer had received irregular and excessive rights.

Leon tower to join Isrotel group

Leon Tower, the tower being built right next the Sea One, hosting the Royal Beach hotel will allow Isrotel to add another 234 rooms on Tel Aviv seafront. It is scheduled to be finished by 2021.

Isrotel Ltd. has notified the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange that it has leased the building which is still under construction on Tel Aviv seafront their other property, the Royal Beach hotel.

The new hotel will be part of Isrotel's Exclusive Collection, which includes the Tel Aviv Royal Beach and the Jerusalem Orient Hotel opened last year. The new 5* hotel will have 234 rooms and suites, swimming pool and spa and a 1,000 square meter conference center.

The new hotel, which is due to be completed by 2021, has been leased for 15 years with an option to extend by another 10 years. Isrotel has undertaken to pay a minimum annual rental fee (linked to the CPI) or a percentage of the annual turnover of the hotel - whichever is higher.

Tel Aviv high-tech accounts for 1 in 10 jobs in the city

If there was ever any doubt that Tel Aviv is the beating heart of the startup nation, a new report by Tel Aviv Global settles it. Not only does Tel Aviv have 2,000 high-tech companies, but one out of every 10 jobs in the city is in the high-tech sector.

The report is based on data conducted by IVC Research in preparation for the DLD Tel Aviv Innovation Festival taking place this week. Tel Aviv Global is a municipal agency that manages various incentives for entrepreneurs setting up in the city.

The new report points out that the city has doubled the number of international R&D centers over the past five years – from 35 in 2012 to 73 in 2017. Well-known international companies now having a tech presence in Tel Aviv include Visa, Renault-Nissan, Bosch, MasterCard, Google, Facebook, Amazon, Coca-Cola, Microsoft, AOL, Samsung, Siemens, PayPal, Deutsche Telekom, Citibank, Intel, Yahoo, Barclays, IBM and Apple.

These international R&D centers provide over 6,200 jobs, according to the report. The 2,000 total high-tech companies in Tel Aviv, moreover, constitute about a quarter of the number of companies in the high-tech sector in Israel overall.

What kind of high-tech companies open shop in Tel Aviv? It used to be more seed-stage companies, but that’s shifted to more R&D-stage companies. “This shift in the composition of startups is evidence of a maturation of startups in the city and their progression from idea stage to a process of research and development,” Tel Aviv Global commented.

Tel Aviv’s interest in attracting more international R&D centers is key for the future of the entire industry, Tel Aviv Global CEO Eytan Schwartz said the agency is “working with our governmental partners on continuing the process of attracting international R&D centers; opening international accelerators; encouraging foreign entrepreneurs to work in the city; and promoting the activity of global corporations with an emphasis on Chinese companies.”

Tel Aviv Global isn’t the only organization that sees the value of Tel Aviv’s intense concentration of startups. The Virgin.com website called Tel Aviv “one of the world’s best startup hubs.”

Source Israel21c

Nahalat Binyamin revival gaining traction

The Nahalat Binyamin pedestrian mall with its arts and crafts market is located in central Tel Aviv, several hundred meters from Rothschild Boulevard, near the White City and close to the prestigious homes in Neve Zedek. The street has an unusual concentration of unique architecture. It nevertheless seems, however, that the place is stuck in a time warp. The public space is neglected and rather dirty, the buildings are in a poor physical state, the backyards look like junkyards, and the businesses are outdated. Nevertheless, several new projects were completed this year, and marketing recently began of apartments in HaAmudim House at the intersection of Rambam and Tavor Streets.

The mall area drew quite a lot of public attention in 2001, when developer Ruth Speiser, who was born in the 1950s as a rent-controlled tenant in the house at the intersection of Rambam and Tavor Streets and slowly accumulated properties in the area, announced her intention of setting up a "quarter" that would include a boutique hotel and luxury apartment buildings. Speiser's ideal was innovative, because it mentioned for the first time shared management of the street. The plan included preservation and reconstruction of all the buildings marked for preservation with additional construction, demolishing buildings in the area not marked for preservation, and building new residential buildings in their places.

According to this plan, commercial space and an underground parking lot with 1,500 parking spaces would be built. One of the plan's interesting ideas was developing backyards and creating immediate access to Allenby Street. "A living dream," she told "Globes" in early 2004, "is rejuvenating the home and street on which you were born."

Not much has happened in the area in the 16 years since the heralded launch of the "quarter" plan. The large debts troubled the developers, the banks lost patience, and the buildings that Speiser and Lehi bought moved from hand to hand. In 2007, Nicholas Berggruen acquired six buildings (Michael Chernoy was previously in negotiations that did not succeed). The buildings were sold to YH Dimri Construction & Development Ltd in 2010, which sold Tamar House to French investor Gerard Bentolila for NIS 35 million in 2012. On June 9, Dimri reported that it had signed an option agreement (not for the first time) to sell three more properties on the street: one at 18 Rambam Street, one at 12-16 Rambam Street, and one at 44 Hatavor Street.

30% increase in luxury home acquisitions in Tel Aviv

Sun-seeking multimillionaires are snapping up second homes in Tel Aviv, according to a new report from market research group New World Wealth.

The beachside city in Israel isn’t the only hotspot attracting more wealthy sun worshippers. Miami; Palm Beach, Florida; Dubai and Sydney also saw a significant jump in their cohort of second-home owners worth upward of US$10 million, according to the report published last week. Both Tel Aviv and Sydney saw a 30% increase between 2015 and 2016, according to New World Wealth, which is based in Johannesburg, South Africa. The Mediterranean metropolis gained 600 more multimillionaires in 2016, up from only 2,000 the year prior. Meanwhile, there were 3,500 multimillionaire second-home owners in Sydney last year, compared to 2,700 in 2015.

In total, New World Wealth, which rounds figures to the nearest hundred, estimates that there are 522,000 people worth US$10 million or more spread across the globe. The vast majority of those individuals, some 87%, own more than just a primary residence, the group said in its news release.

New TLV Fashion Mall to open this month

Right next to Sarona the Gindi TLV Fashion Mall has just opened its doors. Built on the ruins of the wholesale market, the center contains most fashion brands, including H&M, Zara, Fox, Castro, Factor 54, Forever21, as well as several international brands opening their first shop in Israel, such as COS, Dior Boutique, Zara Home, Rag & Bone, Juicy Couture, or Adidas Originals. Another chain to open up in the mall is Super-Pharm, which just closed its store at the corner of Carlebach and Hahashmonaim. Only a subset of the 180 plus stores scheduled to open in the mall will be open on day 1. On the launching night, the company promised that over 100 stores would be open. The main attractions, such as the COS and Zara Home branches, will not be open on the launching night however; their opening is slated for early April.

The mall was originally scheduled to open in April 2015, but that was postponed several times. According to Gindi TLV CEO Mordi Shabat, the delay was not due to difficulty in finding tenants for the stores. "The late opening of some of the stores resulted from demands by the chains' headquarters overseas, some of them merchants doing business in Israel for the first time, and some of which are undergoing a change in concept," he said, adding, "the engineering complexity of the project, which is part of a complex composed of public centers, not just a shopping center, involves a very difficult engineering challenge, and led to two postponements of the opening date."

Kahlon discovers the Laffer Curve

Home purchases in Israel by foreign residents fell to 2,241 homes in 2016, down 31% from 2015, according to figures provided by the Ministry of Finance. The sharpest fall was in Jerusalem where home purchases by foreign residents fell by 41% with a 25% fall in the Tel Aviv and Netanya regions. The fall in home purchases in Israel by foreign residents was far sharper than in the entire market and means that only 2% of homes now purchased in Israel are bought by foreign residents. The sharp fall was due not only to Minister of Finance Moshe Kahlon's actions, including raising the purchase tax from 5% to 8-10% on luxury apartments, in addition to the elimination of the exemption from betterment tax that took effect in 2014, but also the strengthening of the shekel, making it more expensive for foreign residents to buy homes.

There was not a single housing deal over NIS 50 million in 2016, whereas there were several such deals in the previous year and several deals worth more than NIS 100 million in 2014. In Jerusalem, only two luxury apartments (over NIS 10 million) were bought by foreign residents in 2016, down from 12 in 2015. Nevertheless, there was no shortage of major deals last year, with 19 of the 30 most expensive real estate deals last year in Tel Aviv.

New Shuk Rothschild Allenby is now open

Right underneath the Meier on Rothschild building, the new Shuk Rothschild Allenby just opened its doors.

Following hot on the heels of the Sarona Food Market and Shuk HaTzafon, the new Shuk brings some exotic and high quality food stores and restaurants in the south of Tel Aviv.

Whether you live in Tel Aviv all year round whether you're just a tourist visiting the White City, you need to go visit this new place for the following reasons:

1. The Location! It’s on the corner of Rothschild and Allenby, in Tel Aviv’s most up-and-coming area!

2. It’s open 7 days a week!

3. It’s open in the evening, a great place to stop and get some munchies after a long night on the town! Coming soon there’s going to be live music and shows.

4. Some of our old favourites are going to be there, including Bunny Chow (get a free drink with your meal with the Secret Tel Aviv VIP Card) and HaMalabiya.

5. Some cool new additions to the Tel Aviv street food scene, including Mexico City and Chipsea Kings (what an awesome name!).

6. Plus some cool fresh food shops, including Master Fish and a fruit and veg stand – great for shabbat shopping!

This part of town was already popular for the Shuk HaCarmel. This new addition that expands the available range of options is very welcome.

Source Secret Tel Aviv