British Jews find ‘home away from home’ with property purchases in the Jewish State

When Talia Goodman and her family purchased a flat in the up-and-coming Kochav HaTzafon neighbourhood of Tel Aviv 13 years ago, they hadn't even seen the building yet.

“It was a purchase of the heart,” said Goodman, who discovered plans for the new build at a property fair while it was still in development. “We felt like we wanted to invest in Israel, and it's honestly the best money we’ve ever spent in our whole lives.”

Since then, the London-based family has spent nearly two months out of every year at their second home, usually during the Jewish holidays and summertime. They’re in good company: thousands of British Jews have made a similar leap in recent decades for reasons both spiritual and financial, returning to the Jewish State several times a year to stay somewhere that feels, in theory and in practice, like a home away from home.

“A huge percentage of my clients are English people, either making aliyah or buying a holiday home,” said UK-born estate agent Maxine Marks, owner of Maxine Marks Luxury Property in Netanya. “My family business is like ‘adopting people’: we’ll introduce them to their local shuls, sports centres, have parties to introduce people to each other, and we even introduce them to the local hairdressers and vets.”

Marks made aliyah 36 years ago and now runs the agency with her husband and children, helping to match British clients with neighbourhoods that align with their interests and values. “I call myself a shidduch maker but a broker; I’m trying to find what suits them.”

Having guidance from a fellow Brit goes a long way when purchasing a property in a foreign country, where the tax system is complicated at best and bureaucratic processes are both elaborate and... in Hebrew.

“I do know of people who have been put off buying because they haven’t had anyone to help them through it,” said Ida Symons, a Londoner who bought a villa in Herzliya with her husband back in 2006. “But thankfully, now there are lots of different departments that help people who are buying homes and literally hold their hand and help them with the whole legal process.”

A housing estate in Tel Aviv's Kochav HaTzafon neighborhood. (Photo: Alamy)[Missing Credit]

When Symons and her husband first considered buying a holiday home in the early 2000s, they were looking at places in the south of France, Italy and Spain, but the couple swiftly found that "everywhere we went, we felt alone.”

"Then we went to Israel, and it just fell into place,” Symons said. “It felt like home.”

They certainly never feel alone anymore; Symons said their social circle in Israel is “almost bigger than in the UK,” comprised of both Israelis and British holiday makers who visit regularly, like them.

Though they still spend most of the year in north west London to be near their children and grandchildren, the Symonses became Israeli citizens during Covid, making aliyah to circumvent the strict no-foreigners Covid policy adopted by the country at the time.

Symons said Israeli citizenship has made the logistics involved in property ownership much simpler thanks to a little golden ticket called the “teudat zehut,” an Israeli ID card whose information is used to open all kinds of essential accounts, from banking to healthcare, cable to council tax.

Meanwhile foreign homeowners like the Goodmans, who are not eligible for the teudat zehut, need an Israeli citizen to effectively undersign accounts for those essential services.

But Marks and others like her who specialise in helping foreign property owners are able to provide this admin assistance, and Marks insists that the home buying process is otherwise the same for those making aliyah and those looking to buy a holiday home, bar certain tax distinctions which vary by income and property cost.

For Goodman, one of the practical difficulties in setting up a home across the world came down to the furnishing.

“It was tricky because you order things and if they don’t come for 10-12 weeks you need to have someone there to collect it, and some things are really expensive in Israel,” Goodman said.

Enter Ben Scheiner, director of the London-based international moving service Global Relocations, which has effectively become the go-to mover for British Jews shipping off to the Jewish State.

In addition to providing moving services, he advises on some of the lesser-known logistical elements of the move, like that which Goodman ran into when it came to furnishing her Tel Aviv flat.

A colorful condominium complex in Herzliya, Israel, Middle East. (Photo: Alamy)Alamy Stock Photo

“When you have a holiday home in Israel, things are a lot more expensive than they are in England, sometimes prohibitively more expensive,” said Scheiner. “If you buy all of your furniture and appliances in Israel, it will cost you more money, so I always advise people to buy in the UK and ship everything.”

Scheiner explained that Brits are eligible to zero-rate goods exported from the UK to Israel, meaning it is usually cheaper to buy items at home and pay for shipping rather than purchase all the essentials in Israel.

“People's purchasing power is here in the UK still,” Scheiner said.

For Symons and her husband, leveraging the currency exchange has yielded unexpectedly fruitful results.

The couple bought their home in Herzliya during the Lebanon war, when the shekel-to-pound exchange rate was 9:1. Today it is 4.5:1, and a recent valuation of their home indicated the property had quadrupled in value.

Goodman found similar good fortune through the value appreciation of her Tel Aviv flat. “We didn’t buy it as an investment, but it’s crazy how much it’s gone up,” she said. "It's also a lovely thing to be able to leave to my kids one day.”

While property purchases by foreigners fell off in the wake of October 7, they quickly bounced back by December, and now many diaspora Jews see a second home in Israel as a bolthole amid the rising tides of antisemitism in Europe and North America. But for others, buying a second home in Israel offers a way to engage more meaningfully with the country and its people, providing something deeper that periodic hotel visits cannot.

“I think we have a greater sense of home when we’re there,” said Goodman. “I feel a stronger connection to Israel because of it, and I care more because I feel like a part of me is there.”

Some names have been changed