Nightmare landlords, horrible tenants: The hard truth of renting apartments in Israel

Like any relationship in life, renting an apartment can be intimate and if you don’t know the rules of engagement, there’s a lot of room for… error.

In places like Tel Aviv or Jerusalem, little supply and strong demand creates a competitive dynamic for renters. And when it comes to getting the attention of a landlord – money talks.

One of the biggest issues that comes up for newcomers to these cities is the unusual experience of needing to pay a realtor a big fat fee for what most people see as showing up and opening a door. And usually, landlords are supposed to foot the cost to show the place. In locations where competition is high, incoming tenants have become the ones who have to pay that cost up front.

This is just one of the many troubles people face when dealing with housing. Let’s get into it.

A roof that leaked and a lease that broke

Rena Shoshana Forester, 30, knows firsthand how challenging renting in Israel can be. The new immigrant moved into what seemed like an exciting new home in Israel – a tzimmer (wood cabin) on a moshav. She told the Magazine that in the winter, when it rained, it leaked.

“A couple of weeks went by, and the landlord wasn’t prioritizing fixing it. In the meantime, my belongings were being ruined. A big storm came. I put buckets, jars, and cups around to collect the water, but it came down so fast I couldn’t leave the house because I had to be there to dump out the cups,” Forester said.

“I filmed it and sent it to my landlord. I was ridiculed.”

Her story moves from discomfort to outright fear.

“One night, I went to a friend’s and locked my doors. I came home, and a lighter was on my kitchen table that I’d never seen before,” Forester recounted. “I asked everyone I’d recently seen if it belonged to them… maybe I had taken theirs by mistake. ‘No’ was their response.

“I asked the landlord if it might be his… and was blasted for accusing him of entering my home – though I never accused him of that. Finally, he understood that he needed to fix the roof.”

When Forester expressed interest in signing a lease for a second year, the landlord took out the clause in the lease, which stated what things he was responsible for fixing in the home. Forester scheduled a new meeting to review and sign the lease, and she invited an Israeli friend to assist and advocate for her. The friends asked the landlord to put in a clause about what he was responsible for fixing. Both the landlord and his female partner screamed at Forester, telling her they didn’t want her living there anymore. Forester felt as if she were being thrown out into the street.

“I accepted that I needed to move, and I started looking. In the meantime, the landlord disconnected the handle to the spigot I used to water my plants,” Forester recalled.

She moved in with a distant relative so that, as she said, she could at least get a good night’s sleep while looking for her next home. When asked how the experience made her feel, she said she felt helpless, violated, and abused.

With time, Forester healed and was able to move on and make her new life in a better space. In fact, some two years later, she reported that she is about to move into her dream home – with a dream landlord. Forester referred to her former landlords as “criminals” and noted, like many other interviewees for this article, that getting a chance to tell her story gave her the feeling that “some sort of justice is being achieved.”

Forester had wanted to bring forward a legal suit but was advised to save herself the headache and just move out. It’s a song that so many have sung, including during these interviews.

Surprise visits and rent hikes

Yael Rozenman faced a different set of challenges. Her landlord agreed to a modest 5% rent increase, but on the day of signing, things changed.

“The landlord decided to hike it by 15% – an additional NIS 1,250 per month,” Rozenman recounted. “I had to renegotiate on the spot, eventually convincing her to let me stay for three months at the original price so I could find a new place.”

The difficulties didn’t end there. Rozenman says her landlord would show up unannounced, looking to pin normal wear and tear on her. Once, she got into a fight with the air-conditioning handyman, and ended up paying for the repairs herself just to resolve the drama.

Revivo lived in an apartment in Herzliya with three roommates. The young woman felt their landlords were a bit “off,” but they didn’t run into any problems for the first year.

At the end of her first contract [lease], Revivo asked for a one-month extension because, as a student, she was under pressure for final exams. She told the landlords she would help find a new student to take over her room and did, in fact, find someone. Despite the promise, the landlords began showing the apartment to “random people” without consulting the current tenants and would enter the home using their own key.

After explaining that they didn’t feel comfortable with unplanned entrances, the landlords became “extremely aggressive.” Revivo found someone to replace her, but the landlords had already agreed to bring in a 40-year-old male tenant to live with the two young female college students. The landlords continued to enter the apartment without permission, and one time came to kick Revivo out personally.

She remembered filming the aggressive advancements and witnessing the female landlord spit on her boyfriend, who had come to support her during the move. Revivo’s lawyers advised her to play nice in order to get her security deposit back.

Revivo wanted to warn others to stay away from the apartment and landlords but was advised to keep quiet due to strong anti-defamation laws that can incriminate average Israelis for sharing negative sentiments about others that could affect their business or livelihood.

CONSTRUCTION AND accompanying noise are another major issue that came up for multiple people.

Meera Simka came to Israel with her husband and infant as new immigrants. The building they had settled on was under construction (Tama renovations) when the couple signed, but their contract guaranteed it would be finished in time for their move.

When they moved in, the building was still a construction site, with utilities and appliances not hooked up, and workers in the apartment for another month. The landlord was not an Israeli native and was residing out of the country during that time.

With a small baby, the couple felt they had huge safety issues. They complained heavily, and the landlord offered a 1% discount off the rent, which the couple refused. They were stuck with a long lease, and the cost of moving was an imposition. They reported that the landlord had no idea that the building had a ton of problems, didn’t open emails, and didn’t respond when the va’ad habayit (building council) would contact him.

Additionally, the landlord’s lawyer would disappear, not answer calls, and ignore the new tenants. The landlord would also offer abatements on the rent, only to then lie and say he never said that. He lied about workers coming in and who would be arriving, and this was during the war when people were very nervous [about strangers].

When the topic of legal recourse came up, the landlord suggested he was prepared to sue for tens of thousands of shekels’ worth of damages he suggested the new couple had made on the apartment. They decided to save themselves the trouble and hold off on filing a lawsuit. Their advice?

“Never rent from someone outside of Israel,” Simka said. “And get the meanest contract lawyer you can find, to make you an iron-clad agreement.”

SIVAN AV moved into a beautiful new apartment with her new husband in Tel Aviv. It was their dream place, and they poured thousands of shekels into the apartment. Within three months of entry, the entire building next door was evacuated as wildly loud construction commenced. It started at 7 a.m. and went on until 11 at night.

The apartment cost NIS 12,000 per month, a hefty price. They invested NIS 15,000 in making it their dream home. And with electricity that didn’t work, a shower that repeatedly flooded the entire apartment, mold on the walls, and a stove that stopped working two months after they moved in, you could see how the tenants were growing restless. They said the landlords didn’t fix anything.

The landlords told the Avs they had no idea about the construction, but an upstairs neighbor in her 70s told them, on camera, that everyone had known about it for more than 12 years.

The Avs showed the apartment to other couples, hoping to replace themselves, as they felt they couldn’t sleep. When prospective couples entered and heard the incessant construction, they left fast, and the distressed tenants were striking out left and right. No one wanted to move in. Ms. Av was dealing with her sick mother and finding herself miserable. The couple moved out, but the landlords withheld their NIS 25,000 deposit and refused to return it.

“We really begged and pleaded with them to let us out of the contract and give us our deposit back, but they told us only if we get someone to switch us in the contract (which no one agreed to) and even came over late at night to intimidate us. We just had to leave because I was already really emotionally unwell from all the noise and problems in the apartment,” Ms. Av said.

“So we just left with zero money back. They took our rent, checks, NIS 25,000 as a security deposit and ruined our lives and left us pretty much homeless and sublet hopping.”

They are now pushing through a NIS 180,000 lawsuit, seeking justice against landlords they feel have been untruthful, manipulative, and outright wrong.

A landlord’s perspective: ‘I’ll never be nice again’

You might ask yourself, “What about the landlord? Surely, it must be hard to rent out your space to unknown people.” Let’s hear another perspective.

A family of olim (new immigrants) from Russia and the US, who have asked not to be named, came to Israel and found it difficult to rent an apartment without guarantors. A guarantor is a person who can guarantee a payment or sum of money in case the renter comes up short or doesn’t pay. In 2015, after struggling with rentals, they bought a secondhand apartment in Jaffa and became landlords themselves. They really wanted to be nice, but they became prone to making many mistakes.

The ordeal began when they rented their apartment to a tenant who asked if he could get out of the rental agreement with no replacement if he gave three months’ notice. To be nice, they agreed, only to be unable to replace the tenant.

On the second attempt, they rented to a friendly Arab mother and daughter, only to find that the eleven checks they provided for the year bounced after month one. The first rental payment had been made in cash. No lawyer was involved.

“Neighbors started to complain about loud music and people coming in and out at night,” they landlords said. “The phones of the tenants were not working, and judging by the neighbors’ descriptions, the people we signed the contract with were not the ones living there.”

When they attempted to contact the tenants, their phones were disconnected, and it became clear that others were occupying the apartment instead. Legal action to evict the tenants took five months, during which the couple had to freeze their mortgage payments and endure “scary” anonymous threats by phone instructing the family to leave the tenants alone and drop the case.

BY THE time the tenants finally left, they had destroyed the apartment, leaving behind a costly renovation and no compensation.

Their third tenant – a single mother with two children – initially seemed promising, but soon financial and behavioral issues arose. Checks bounced repeatedly, and the tenant used guilt tactics, claiming her circumstances left her unable to pay. The landlords called the guarantors, asking for the rent money. At first the responses were woeful, but over time they became hostile.

The desperate tenant allegedly threatened to “blow up the building” if eviction was attempted. Despite efforts to mediate with the tenant’s family, the debt grew, and the financial strain forced the landlords to sell the apartment. Even then, eviction required months of legal action. “In the end, no one compensated us for anything,” they said.

Reflecting on their experiences, the landlords expressed frustration with Israel’s tenant protection laws, which they felt left landlords powerless.

“If we ever become landlords again,” they concluded, “we would not be nice – ever.”  

Ask an Israeli lawyer: Advice from Ily Kipperman

When looking for reliable information about the Israeli rental market, I found Ily Kipperman answering tons of questions in English from olim in a Facebook group called “Ask an Israeli Lawyer.”

Kipperman has been running his law office for six years on his own while also making time to help new immigrants wherever he can, including at the social media group. Its rules are strict, such as “Comments/responses from Israeli lawyers only.” This writer has been banned from communicating in the group after commenting about her journalistic needs. Nevertheless, he responded privately for this article.

“People want small bits of advice with landlords, neighbors, third parties, and communal areas of their properties… and any relevant information that might help them mitigate or prevent any potential legal disputes,” he said. “I am happy to oblige.”

Kipperman met his wife four years ago, roughly a year after she made aliyah. Being in the group and after seeing firsthand the legal difficulties Olim faces, she started forwarding him questions and concerns she was seeing in the Olim internet community.

“I know that people find it difficult to pay out of pocket sums to lawyers – and they know they can rely on significant advice I could give them through the posts. Eventually, it becomes beneficial to us both because if they want, they can continue with me for formal representation,” he said.

“Not only do they not speak the language, but it’s hard for them to maneuver through the legal bureaucracy involved in living in a new place. Of course, it gives satisfaction.”

Who pays the realtor?

One common question Kipperman tackles involves realtor fees. Tenants should not be responsible for these costs unless they specifically sought out the realtor. “If the landlord hires a realtor to find tenants, he should pay the fee – not the tenant,” he explained.

However, in Tel Aviv and surrounding areas, market demand often leads to tenants being pressured into covering these fees. “It’s a system that overwhelmingly favors landlords,” he added, describing it as a phenomenon that has emerged due to the high demand for housing.

Kipperman said this phenomenon of tenants paying realtor fees happens in other cities with supply-and-demand issues, such as locations throughout Canada where there’s an influx of immigrants, students, and workers in need of housing.

According to the expert, realtors are 100% in the interest of the home owner and not the tenant or renter. Home owners control the market, the prices, and have the ability to take advantage.

In other words, if homeowners publish an apartment for rent, they should pay the realtor’s fee if the realtor finds a suitable tenant for the owner. If the tenants search and manage to find an apartment, and their actions and his realtor’s actions come to that, the tenant should pay. In simpler terms, whoever succeeds in bringing the parties to sign a lease agreement should pay the realtor fee – whether it’s the tenant or the homeowner. That’s the optimal situation.

Most common rental issues

• Early exit of the tenant.
• Damages: Water damages & amenities in the apartment. Some are the landlord’s responsibility, and some are the tenants’.
• Threats: Threats of neighbors. Not only threats but overall threatening and intimidating behavior of neighbors to tenants.
• Mold. Courts are more open to accepting the story of the plaintiff (tenants).

Small claims success

Many disputes, such as mold, water damage, and early lease exits, end up in small claims court. While lawyers can’t formally represent clients in these cases, Kipperman assists by drafting documents and advising behind the scenes.

“Small claims court is flexible, quick, and a good tool for resolving monetary disputes,” he said. However, for larger cases, such as breaches of property sale contracts or disputes exceeding the court’s monetary cap, formal litigation becomes necessary. For olim, Kipperman stressed the importance of consulting a lawyer early: “Even small advice can change your life. It’s better to ask before things go wrong, not after.”

Small claims court works with cases under NIS 37,000 ($10,100) and allows people to get smaller, monetary justice.

The small claims court will only accept monetary cases because these are the most simple and common ones to adjudicate relatively quickly, without consuming excessive court resources. “This mechanism is not optimal, but fairly decent,” Kipperman said.

Anything over 37,000 NIS or issues regarding comprehensive or complex legal and factual premises must be brought to regular court. The next level of claims, from NIS 37,000 to NIS 2.5 million ($685,000), is considered the magistrate court jurisdiction – in which you can fill a case file up to NIS 75,000 ($20,500) cap in a relevantly short procedure. Higher monetary claims are submitted in the circuit court.

Are judges lazy?

No. “Judges face a lack of staff and a huge number of case files. These are the main factors in which a judge might either decide to throw out the case or pursue the course, should the case have merit,” the lawyer said.

“I believe if a case has merit and the judge still wants to throw it out because of his or her agenda or lack of work power or work load… do not be deterred. Continue on with the case, even if the judge is showing dislike – or not much interest. There are other factors at play,” Kipperman said.

“In some cases, if the judge ruled against you, you can file an appeal. But the average success rate in the Israeli court system with appeals is 5%-15%, so this is one of the reasons I would urge you not to be deterred and to bring your case as strongly as possible throughout the process.”

How much do you charge for your legal services?

“The legal fee depends on several factors. For general counsel, I charge between 600- 800 NIS / hour with litigation services being calculated differently.”

Things to know about renting

1. Furnished vs. unfurnished

Unlike in many countries, most Israeli apartments come unfurnished. Furnished options are available but can be significantly more expensive. Don’t expect a refrigerator, stove, or an air conditioning unit. These are things you should look for.

2. Deposits and guarantees

Landlords often require guarantees, especially for new immigrants. These can include cash deposits (two to three months’ rent), bank guarantees, or a guarantor. Tenants should also have a checkbook ready for dated payments.

3. Repairs and responsibilities

Under the Fair Rent Act, landlords are responsible for fixing reasonable wear and tear, regardless of any contradictory clauses in the lease. However, tenants are typically responsible for ongoing maintenance.

4. Dealing with agents

Many renters in Israel opt to work with real estate agents, who charge one month’s rent (and sometimes VAT) as commission for leases of a year or more. You can ask your realtor to help you with negotiations or contract reviews. Put him/her to work, nicely.

5. Legal resources for tenants

The Tel Aviv-Jaffa Municipality says they have taken steps to empower tenants. They’ve created a Recommended Lease Agreement, which they put on their website in English. Tenants can find landlords willing to use this agreement on platforms like Yad2.

9 Mazeh (a building located in central Tel Aviv) offers affordable legal advice for tenants in the city. For NIS 70 (NIS 49 with a Digitel card), renters can consult a lawyer to review contracts and address disputes.

Ily Kipperman’s Tel Aviv law office can be reached via www.kipperman-law.co.il