Friends and family pricing: the discount in a new project you'll almost never see on your own.
By Chaim Shulman, Real Estate Advisor, Gabai Real Estate
"I'll just deal with the developer directly, why would I need an agent?"
It's a fair question, and one we hear a lot: going straight to the sales office looks simpler and cheaper on paper, one point of contact and no commission, but after enough of these deals we've seen why it rarely stays that simple, and why it doesn't always save you money in the long run.
The person sitting across from you at the sales office, whether it's the developer's in-house team or an agent representing that one project, has a clear job: sell units in that building. The project pays that salesperson, and that's fine. But it also means they sometimes have incentives to sell specific units that may not be the best fit for you. Those are the units the developer wants sold first, so they can hold on to the "best apartments": the ones with the best directions, the best views, the best layouts. As a project gains momentum, those later apartments sell for more, so developers often like to leave the best for last. An agent, because of their relationship with the sales manager, can often make sure those units get disclosed to you. We've been on both sides of the aisle here, and have represented developers before, so we know this firsthand.
Here's the part most buyers don't think about: developers actually like working with agents. Agents bring them a steady flow of clients, not just a one-time visitor, which means agents can often access rates or terms on a unit that simply aren't offered to someone who walks in on their own.
In Israel specifically, some of the best and most competitively priced projects never really hit the open market until the prices are as expensive as everyone else's. They move through agents at the "friends and family" stage, before public sales even open, and by the time a buyer finds the project on their own, the best units and pricing are already gone.
Walk into one sales office, and that's the only story you hear. An agent who isn't tied to that specific project can put it next to two or three others: different neighborhoods, different price-per-meter, different developer track records, so you're actually choosing between options, not just accepting the one in front of you.
You also lose the person actually weighing the pros and cons of each project against each other. There are tons of new projects out there right now, and it's hard to distinguish between them. On your own, after enough sales offices, every project starts to sound the same: same promises, same polished pitch, same "this is the best location." An agent with real experience understands what those differences are, and can highlight the detriments of a project that the sales manager is obviously looking to hide.
What worked for a friend or family member who already bought might not work for you. We once had a client come to us through a referral from a friend who'd just bought in a specific building, and everyone assumed he'd end up in the same place. Once we actually sat down with him, it became clear his needs were different, and he ended up buying in a completely different project, drawn in by different features and amenities that actually mattered to him. Going in on your own, especially following someone else's lead, makes it easy to miss that your situation isn't the same as theirs.
Payment structures, what's standard versus an upgrade, the technical spec (מפרט טכני), how realistic that delivery date is based on the developer's actual history: these aren't things most buyers know to ask about, especially the first time around. An agent who's sat through dozens of these conversations knows which questions save you from a bad surprise later.
One example: whether the project has a bank guarantee (ליווי בנקאי) or not, and what that actually means for your protection as a buyer. Enough buyers assume that knowing there's a bank guarantee in place is enough. It protects your money, and it means someone is responsible for getting you a finished product. But at the end of the day, you don't want to be relying on that alone, you want to be relying on a good developer. Leaning on the bank guarantee by itself can leave gaps between what was initially expected and what actually gets delivered. We've had clients on the receiving end of that exact gap, where they ended up having to put in significant additional money just to get the finished apartment they'd actually paid for. With more developers and contractors going bankrupt these days, understanding exactly what you're protected against, and what you're not, matters more than ever.
Two "identical" apartments on paper can be very different in reality: exposure, floor placement, what's going to block the view once phase two is built, where the noise comes from. This kind of judgment comes from having seen hundreds of units, not from a floor plan rendering.
Even something like which floor picks up less street noise is the kind of detail a buyer wouldn't think to check, but an agent factors in automatically. The same goes for size. The renderings often look like they can fit a dining room table and a large living area, but those are just renderings. Under the Law of Sale, the deduction from the net meterage is often 10% of the space, if not more. We can help you understand what that size really looks like after the deduction, so you get a realistic picture of what would actually fit in that space, not what the renderings show.
An agent isn't the one buying the apartment, and that distance matters. It means they can negotiate on price, added costs, or terms in a way that's much harder to do when it's your own money and your own deal on the table. It also means you have someone there actively pushing for you, not just present in the room, but working the whole way through the process on your behalf.
Just as important, we know how to stretch the rubber band without breaking it. We had a client who kept pushing for more upgrades on a unit. We had already negotiated the developer down quite a bit, and the sales manager was ready to start contacting the other people who had been interested in that unit, frustrated with the constant negotiations from our buyer. We put a stop to it and told our buyer to see the forest instead of the trees: stop asking for small things in the scheme of things, upgrades they could later do themselves without paying a lot, and secure a deal in a project that was very attractive. Had we pushed the developer any further, they would have lost that deal to another buyer. We know where that fine line is.
It's not just about the unit, it's about the project and the area. Is the asking price actually in line with comparable projects nearby? Where has pricing in that area been trending? Most buyers don't have a reference point for this. An agent who's been tracking multiple projects in the area does.
Some projects also compare apples to oranges on purpose: stacking their pricing against a different tier of building, a different spec level, or a less desirable location, to make their own numbers look better than they are. A price can look like an unbeatable deal when it's really just being measured against the wrong thing. Knowing what a project should actually be compared to is part of knowing whether a price is really good, or just made to look that way.
Once you sign, the developer's sales team moves on to the next buyer, that's simply their job. Sometimes it's simpler than that, the sales rep you dealt with has just moved on from the company entirely by the time you need to follow up. An agent has an ongoing relationship with you, and with that developer across many other clients, which means you're not navigating things completely on your own once the ink is dry.
None of this means the developer or their sales team are doing anything wrong. They're doing exactly what they're there to do. The question is whether you want someone in that room who's there to do the same for you.
If you've already seen a project on your own and just want a trained set of eyes on it, reach out. We're happy to take a look.
Chaim Shulman is a Real Estate Advisor at Gabai Real Estate, a boutique Anglo-Israeli agency serving Anglo and Israeli buyers across Jerusalem, Efrat, Ma'ale Adumim, Ra'anana, Tel Aviv, and communities throughout Israel. To have Chaim look at a project you're considering, reach out at chaim@gabairealestate.com or +972-58-583-3377.
