They Paid ₪980,000 for Their Apartment and Sold It for ₪2 Million

A lottery that pays out in six figures

Imagine winning the right to buy a brand new apartment for hundreds of thousands of shekels below what it is worth, then selling it a few years later for a million shekel profit. It sounds like a pitch. It is not. In July 2026, the Treasury’s Chief Economist’s office put hard numbers to exactly this: households who won the Mehir Lamishtaken lottery in Rishon LeZion in 2016 and later sold walked away with an average real, inflation adjusted gain of about 1.2 million shekels. That was the strongest of the early projects, roughly 22 percent above the gains in Lod, and close to double those in Afula.

Numbers like that explain why almost everyone I speak with, clients and friends alike, eventually asks me the same question about this program: is it worth entering the draw or not? So let me lay out the essentials in plain terms, the same way I have explained them to friends and clients who ask.

So what is Mehir Lamishtaken?

Mehir Lamishtaken, which translates as Buyer’s Price or Target Price, is an Israeli government program that subsidizes housing for eligible residents. It is, in market terms, a subsidized housing program. The state markets new apartments at a price set below the going market rate, and it allocates them by lottery among applicants who meet a fixed set of criteria. You are not bidding, and you are not being sold to. You are entering a draw for the right to buy a home at a discount.

Where it came from, and why

The idea is older than most people assume. Its first version appeared in the early 1990s, during the large wave of immigration from the former Soviet Union, when the goal was to set aside a share of the apartments in large new projects, roughly 10 to 15 percent, for eligible buyers. The program most of us picture today took its current shape after the 2015 elections, when then Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon entered office and pushed it hard as the flagship of his housing agenda. From 2016 the state relaunched it at scale, marketing land to developers on the condition that the finished homes be sold to lottery winners at a discount.

How the state finds the land

Most of these projects sit on land owned by the state and managed by the Israel Land Authority (Rashut Mekarkei Yisrael), the body that administers public land, which is the great majority of land in the country. State land is simply easier to release at a discount, because the government controls the price of the plot itself. Once a site is designated for the program, the Land Authority publishes a tender to developers. The winning developer builds the project, and some or all of the homes are marketed to eligible buyers through the lotteries.

How you actually win

The allocation runs through a computerized, random lottery, and the sequence is straightforward. You obtain a certificate of eligibility. You register for the lottery attached to the project or city you want. When registration closes, the system draws randomly among everyone who qualifies. Winners receive a position on the list, a serial number, and the developer then invites winners in that order to choose an apartment. Whoever ranks higher chooses first, and therefore enjoys the widest selection.

One point is worth being clear about. The lottery is for the right to choose a home, not for a specific home. Even a winner can reach the front of the queue and find that some of the apartments are already taken. Those who do not win can usually keep entering future lotteries without limit, as long as they still meet the eligibility rules.

The money: discount plus a cheaper mortgage

The headline benefit is the discount, which has typically run in the range of 200,000 to 400,000 shekels off market value, with additional grants of tens of thousands of shekels in peripheral towns to draw buyers there. Just as important, and often overlooked, is the financing. Winners are generally eligible for a state supported mortgage on favorable terms, calculated against the home’s market value rather than its discounted price, at an interest rate set below the prevailing average and capped, with a modest minimum equity requirement. In practice this is what makes a first purchase reachable: buyers arrive with relatively little of their own capital compared with what a second hand deal would demand, and the subsidized loan carries much of the rest.

How long from winning to keys

There is no fixed timeline, because it depends on the stage the project has reached when the lottery is held. If construction is already underway, the home can be ready within roughly two to three years. If building has not yet started, the wait is usually three to five years, and sometimes longer when permits, infrastructure, or construction run into delays. Every project publishes an estimated occupancy date, but that date can move with the pace of the build. This is not a program for a buyer who needs a home this year.

When you are allowed to sell

A Mehir Lamishtaken home comes with a lock on resale, and the exact rule is worth getting right. You are free to sell on the open market once the first of two deadlines passes: five years from the date the building receives its occupancy permit (Tofes 4, the Form 4 certificate that allows a new building to be lived in), or seven years from the date you won the lottery. Whichever of those two dates comes first is the one that frees you, not the later one. Because construction usually takes several years, the seven year mark from the lottery is often the deadline that applies.

This is general information, not legal advice. The exact dates are written into each project’s contract and commitment letter, so if you are close to that window, check the figures on your own paperwork before you act.

What the data says about the winners

The gains are real, and I have watched them land on the ground. Among my own clients and friends who won and later came to us to sell, the outcomes have been striking. In Pisgat Ze’ev, a four room apartment (in the Israeli convention, that is a living room plus three bedrooms) with parking, a balcony, storage, and an elevator was bought for 980,000 shekels and sold for 2,000,000, a gain of about 100 percent. In Ramat Shlomo, a four room home with parking, a large sukkah balcony and a view, storage, and an elevator was bought for 1,450,000 shekels and sold for 3,000,000, a gain of more than 100 percent. What makes those numbers even more remarkable is that the winners entered with relatively modest equity and a subsidized state mortgage, which is exactly what made that first purchase possible.

With that being said, there is an important caveat, and the Treasury’s own economists make it. Home prices across Israel have risen sharply since 2016, so a family that had simply bought on the open market that year would also have seen their property appreciate. Part of a winner’s gain comes from the discount and the low cost financing, and part of it comes from a market that rose for almost every owner in the country. Both are true at the same time.

A little perspective on the odds

The scale of demand puts the individual’s chances in context. According to figures reported for the program, between 2016 and 2025 there were roughly 2,350 lotteries, offering on the order of 162,500 apartments, with about 131,000 households winning the right to buy. Those draws drew something like 15.5 million registration entries. That last number is not 15.5 million different people, it counts repeat entries, because eligible households enter lottery after lottery, year after year, hoping their number comes up. Set against a country of more than ten million residents, and a housing shortage measured in the hundreds of thousands of units, the program can feel like a drop in the sea. It changes the lives of the families it reaches. It does not, on its own, change the market.

What it means for you

For a buyer, the program is worth entering if you qualify and can wait, precisely because entering costs you little and the potential upside is large, but it should sit alongside a real plan rather than being the whole plan. For a seller who won years ago and is now past the lock, the current market has, in many neighborhoods, been generous, though every home and every date is specific. For an investor, the most useful signal is where these projects are being built. The neighborhoods where the government releases land for the program are the ones that will absorb a wave of new supply over the following years, and that affects local prices and rents. None of this is personalized financial or legal advice, and the eligibility rules, tax treatment, and resale dates turn on individual circumstances.

The honest bottom line

Speaking personally, and this is my own view, I welcome the program overall. It has put real families into homes they could not otherwise have bought, and for some it has built the equity that let them take their next step. At the same time, it is not equitable. A lottery, by its nature, helps the few who are lucky rather than the many who qualify, and I believe there are better ways to bring eligible families into home ownership. The goal is the right one. We are still a long way from reaching it.

Gabai Real Estate is a boutique Anglo Israeli agency serving over 3,000 Anglo and Israeli buyers across Jerusalem, Efrat, Ma’ale Adumim, and communities throughout Israel. We follow the official data so our clients do not have to, and we read it with the benefit of what we see on the ground, deal by deal. If you are weighing a move in Israel, whether that means entering a lottery, selling a home you won years ago, or simply reading the market before you decide, it helps to read the data with someone who knows the ground. That is a conversation we are always happy to have.