Charish comeback? • Orthodox acquires from construction companies

Contrary to expectations, it is now clear to all that Charish will not be only Ultra-Orthodox. However, it seems that in recent times the Haredi community wakes up about the possibility of buying apartments in the city.

Dozens of haredim gathered on Thursday in Bnei Brak to hear about one of these programs. It turns out that while members of the Green Charish, are talking about the possibility to expand the circle of secular buyers in the new city, the Haredim are negotiating intensively with the winning contractors to purchase from them the land successively.

Recall, two months ago, the court invalidated the winning of 3400 ultra-Orthodox families, who competed together on most plots in the city due to argument positions of coordination between the various organizations representing them. Since then Charish seemed to have transfigured from becoming Orthodox and receiving secular character. Green Charish association also went on sale 4 bedroom apartments at a price of 660,000 shekels, and even before the grants.

There is no doubt that the haredi public, despite initial hope is not running in droves to buy apartments in Charish. The reasons are varied; primarily the lack of clarity about the nature of the population which will live in the area. Orthodox already constitutes the majority of homebuyers in the different groups. Twelve hundred ultra-Orthodox families, most of them Baalei Teshuva, and about six hundred families belonging to the national religious stream, place the 600 secular buyers so far, a small secular minority in a religious / Orthodox city.

Construction companies were also facing an unfamiliar problem: mortgage banks announced that they will not give loans for construction site, until it becomes clear what the nature of the settlement is.

Into this vacuum came the haredi public, offering construction companies an offer hard to resist: centralized purchase of all the land at once without the need for marketing and advertising and especially without having an interim funding until the end of the sale.

Construction companies negotiated in secret while hiding sensitive information. However, the first agreement was signed yesterday between a group of activists and The Jay Engineering. Within hours a conference was organized at Vizhnitz hall in Bnei Brak, while a speaker drove around city, and called the public to come out and hear on the plan to build homes for less than half a million shekels, and in two hours nearly fifty purchase agreements were signed. Most of them belong to Vizhnitz.

"No problem living near secular"

The plan was presented to the hundreds who gathered by Nathan Rosenblatt, chairman of the brokerage firm, Gur Baaretz, Rosenblatt (36) is many years behind Orthodox public construction projects, and the former head of buyers to Hephzibah, managing which won exceptional praise of Court. He told about the initiative on the first day of disqualification of the auction, and how he swung from one rabbi to the next of the Haredi public to gain their blessing.

According to the outline he presented, should buy the land at a price ranging from 140 to 180 per unit. Accordingly, and given the fact that almost no one should make profit out of this, comes out that the price of a 3 bedroom sized about 77 sqm exceeds NIS 550,000 before grants. If one calculates until the total grants received NIS 100,000 we receive a new apartment for the fantastic price of NIS 450,000.

Rosenblatt also revealed to his listeners that he is about to sign with the other contractors on the same route. According to this account, it follows that if his plan comes true, in six months there will be about 4,000 haredi buyers in Charish, with less than a thousand of them secular.

On this topic Rosenblatt is trying to sound reassuring: "We have no problem living next to the secular. Bnei Brak is bordered on all sides in secular significance, and has not created friction against it. We welcome the secular minority in the city; we can live with them peacefully, the question is if they want to".

The agreement itself was presented by Attorney David Zeira who is supposed to legally accompany the group, and his son Yisrael Zeira, chairman of "Emunah" real estate marketing national religious public, the company that marketed the five hundred housing to the national religious public to date.

'בחדרי' גם ברשתות החברתיות - הצטרפו!