Will Israel's finance minister be able to lower housing prices?
During his election campaign, Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon promised to lower housing prices, but is now finding it hard to fulfill his promise and working to lower the expectations of his disappointed public.
“Nothing is going to be like it was 10 years ago,” admitted Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon when he was asked on Army Radio whether he agrees with economists who hold that a moderate reduction in housing prices will be enough to avoid creating an economic crisis. Kahlon said, “I think that’s right. We don’t want to create crises in any area. We want a normal economy.”
The March 3 interview with Kahlon, a year after the March 2015 elections, took place amid reports of a continuing rise in housing prices. Only last month, the government appraiser reported an 8% increase in housing prices in 2015, when the Israeli public still hoped that the real estate bubble had reached its breaking point and was about to burst.
Thus, the finance minister’s statement in this interview, lost in the slurry of political summations marking a year since the election, was a crucial step in setting expectations between him and the public and should have been discussed further.
Kahlon — who marketed himself in his last electoral campaign as a Robin Hood who would significantly reduce housing prices, and possibly believed it himself — is now lowering expectations. It may be that he understands that unlike the cellular communications reform that made him a political star and beloved by the masses, the real estate market depends on many variables and components over which the finance minister has no control.
