Israel has seen a 400% increase in landlords seeking legal help for tenants who have not paid their rent.
Assuming a tenant fails to pay the average rental rate for 14 months, a landlord can incur a loss of around 60,000 shekels ($18,440).
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The findings were provided by rent guarantee company DiffeRent, which surveyed some 70,000 rental property owners, around one-third of which said they rely on their rental properties as a source of income.
According to the survey's findings, some 10% of landlords have lost income due to a tenant not paying rent or refusing to vacate a property. Around 30% of landlords in Israel owe money on the mortgages they took out to purchase the rental property.
With 220 instances, the northern city of Haifa has seen the highest increase in instances of nonpayment of rent.
In Beersheba, real estate agency Nadlanist noted an average 16.5% decrease in apartment rentals.
Most of the apartments rented out in 2020 were rented out for lower than market rates. Around 10% of rental properites are vacant.
According to DiffRent Ceo Elad Shriki, "The corona crisis has exacerbated the situation."
He said, "We saw that there are tenants who up until the crisis made their rental payments every month, and today those same tenants, after being on a few months' unpaid leave, are in a complex situation in which they are unable to pay their rent. As a result, there are quite a few crises between landlords and tenants who find themselves breaking a contract due to the very real problem of being unable to pay."
"That's why we took this issue one step further," he said, noting the company understood it needed to "sensitive and considerate of the tenants to overcome the crisis, and that means understanding what the tenants are going through even when the landlords are [our] real clients." He said they were able to deal with the complexity of the situation. "We doubled our service representatives, the professional consultants. Through debt rescheduling and delaying payments, we can help both sides."
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