The jewels of the East - Haaretz

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Wed., November 07, 2007 Cheshvan 26, 5768

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The jewels of the East

By Guy Lieberman

tags: Realestate

For thirty years Kfar Saba, Ra'anana and Hod Hasharon have been competing for the lead. In what? In many areas, including sheer desirability - and property value. At first Kfar Saba was ahead, but during the 1990s Ra'anana forged ahead, leaving the other city gasping in its dust. During the last 10 years Hod Hasharon also passed Kfar Saba, though the latter has been showing signs of a renaissance. Is Ra'anana in danger of losing its crown?

"Housing in Tel Aviv is to expensive for us, so we thought to go back to the source and live in Ra'anana. But even there the prices there are too much for us," says Ruth, 32, mother of a two-year-old boy. She and her husband ultimately bought an apartment in the "200 complex," a crowded neighborhood of high-rises in Hod Hasharon that has attracted hundreds of young couples from Tel Aviv and surroundings.

Next to the 200 Complex is a large park. New train stations connecting Kfar Saba and Hod Hasharon to Tel Aviv are mere minutes away.

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Ruth's story reflects the reality of today: Ra'anana leads the pack, with Hod Hasharon in second place. But things haven't always been that way.

In the 1980s, Kfar Saba was considered the leading city in the Sharon. The good image of its education system attracted "immigrants" from other areas of central Israel and the inhabitants of Kfar Saba were famously faithful to their city - they stayed put.

The change came in the 1990s, when Ze'ev Bielski took over as mayor of Ra'anana. In not much time, he brought revolution.

For one thing, Bielski improved the municipality's communications with residents. He opened a new division to beautify the city's appearance. He can even take credit for improving grades at the city's schools.

Bielski was also first to realize the potential of Israel's booming hi-tech sector, not to mention of its workers. He accelerated the formation of a hi-tech section in Ra'anana and even made appearances at hi-tech conferences, urging the workers to settle in his city.

Uri Keidar, director general of the Ra'anana municipality for 18 years, describes the development of the city's hi-tech community and its Anglo Saxonification.

"In the case of the hi-tech people, it was a tango," he said. "We wanted to bring hi-tech into the city and therefore developed an industrial zone, which attracted hi-tech people, who settled down. Ra'anana's popularity among that community was deliberately shaped."

As for the Anglos, that hadn't been city policy, Keidar relates: "It was ear to mouth. It started with a small group and we've seen it turn into a real community. When we looked into the matter we realized that because it was a relatively closed community, there is a great deal of value in the impression they pass onto friends and family overseas. Their love for Ra'anana attracted this population to the city."

Ra'anana's popularity among the hi-tech and Anglo communities soared, as did the hi-tech bubble, and prices in the city exploded in the late 1990s. Ra'anana was on the map as a high-class town but it became too costly for many. People wanting to live there started looking more closely at its neighbors: Kfar Saba and Hod Hasharon.

Hod Hasharon actually awoke from its coma, as far as property values were concerned, at the start of the new millennium. Its mayor at the time, Ezra Binyamini, allowed expensive single-family houses to be erected in the west and approved residential high-rises in the northern 200 complex. The "Ra'anana refugees" saw that it was good and stampeded.

Hod Hasharon, which had been last on the list of the threesome, forged to second place, leaving Kfar Saba and its more sluggish development behind.

Contractor Shlomi Hasson believes that of the three cities, Hod Hasharon has the most potential: "It's greener and it has more land available for development than Ra'anana or Kfar Saba."

Let's look at the numbers. The municipal area of Kfar Saba is 14,169 dunams. Ra'anana's is 14,878 dunams. Hod Hasharon has almost 20,000 dunams yet its population is half that of the other two cities (each), 44,000 compared with 81,300 in Kfar Saba and 72,800 in Ra'anana.

Hod Hasharon is the least crowded of the cities, which automatically enhances its attraction. The combination of open space, improved transportation infrastructure (leaving aside are horrible traffic jams on Highway 5) and the construction surge that created hundreds of new apartments in the city's west and north lifted demand in Hod Hasharon. Prices have risen higher than those in Kfar Saba, too.

City planner Dr. Rina Degani, director of the Geocartography Institute, says that from 2003 to 2007 the average price of a flat in Hod Hasharon was about $200,000, compared with $196,000 in Kfar Saba and $230,000 in Ra'anana.

A single-room flat in Ra'anana now goes for $85,000, while in Hod Hasharon and Kfar Saba its cost would be just $65,000, with a slight bias in favor of Hod Hasharon. (In the late 1980s, Kfar Saba officials decided to approve the construction only of large flats, in order to attract a more established population, a policy that bettered the city's status over time.)

Flats falling into the "luxury" category, such as penthouses or ground-floor garden flats, bring the differences between the cities into stark contrast. In Ra'anana the average price is $510,000, falling to $419,000 in Kfar Saba and $323,000 in Hod Hasharon. Degani says that Hod Hasharon is narrowing the gap, but it will never bear Ra'anana in terms of luxury housing prices, she predicts.

Realtor Benny Raanan of the Hod real estate agency says Hod Hasharon has turned into a brand, not one as powerful as Ra'anana, perhaps: "But it's a brand whose value is rising, so today the ratio between price and value is tending toward Hod Hasharon."

The most desirable neighborhoods in Hod Hasharon are Hadar and Ramat Hadar, featuring the single-family homes, next to the Four Seasons park. Other hot areas are the 200 complex and areas with low construction. Several single-family homes in the city's west have sold for more than a million dollars, says Anglo-Saxon Ra'anana's Barry Cohen.

Apartment prices have also risen in Hod Hasharon. A three-room flat in the city's north will now sell for $210,000, a four-room flat for $275,000 and a five-room apartment could command $310,000.

Older areas in Hod Hasharon, such as Gil Amal and Magdiel, can boast a roughly 10 percent increase in housing prices during the last year. It's worth keeping an eye on Neve Neeman, in the city's south. Raanan says housing prices there have risen by 20 percent.

Nor is Ra'anana faltering. Prices in areas such as Kiryat Ganim, Lev Hapark in the south, Shikun Ovdimi in the north and Pardes Street, housing prices are a high $3,500 per square meter. They're lower in the city center, though still not cheap at $2,700, after having risen by 5 to 10 percent in the last year. Single-family luxury cottages start at half a million dollars and can pass double that sum.

But the polarity in Hod Hasharon is the strongest: you can find housing anywhere from $1,000 per sqm to $3,500.

For two decades now Kfar Saba has watched Ra'anana overtake it in the west and Hod Hasharon overtake it in the south. It didn't develop a cutting-edge hi-tech zone like Ra'anana, thus missing a major potential source of income. The years have been characterized by fewer building starts, though to be fair the city is more densely populated. Old neighborhood such as Aliya and Josephtal were not developed.

But Kfar Saba seems to be coming into its own. Today it boasts the most building starts, many of which are designed to attract young couples, which shows that the city's leadership are thinking for the long run. Three months ago the city inaugurated a major park and housing prices are slowly but steadily rising, indicating that the city's status is improving. Housing prices are reaching $3,000 per sqm near the city hospital, Meir, though in the city center they're stuck at $2,000 per sqm.

Yossi Gordon, director general of the Association of Contractors and Builders in Israel, says that Kfar Saba is on the rise but it isn't there yet: demand is heavier in Ra'anana and Hod Hasharon.

"Kfar Saba as long been in a process of growth, but it hasn't made the breakthrough yet," he observes. "It may come with the construction of thousands of apartments in the coming years." Maybe so: Kfar Saba certainly hasn't given up to its smaller sisters of the Sharon.

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1.	Tortured use of English	04:08	\|	Andy	25/09/07

2.	My thoughts exactly	08:11	\|	T	25/09/07

3.	Geographically Incorrect: They Are Not East	08:23	\|	Yishai Kohen	25/09/07

4.	@3, Yishai Kohen, east ISRAEL, not Palestine...	17:42	\|	A. Rubinstein	25/09/07

5.	@4, A Rubinstein, There`s no such country as Palestine...	18:33	\|	Ilya	25/09/07

6.	There is Palestine	22:08	\|	Amitai	25/09/07

7.	to #1 & #2	23:52	\|	gever	25/09/07

8.	To the Gever	16:45	\|	Andy	25/10/07

9.	hey andy	00:38	\|	gever	08/11/07

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