In the Israeli coastal city of Caesarea, demand for homes overlooking the Caesarea Golf Club, the country’s only golf course, has skyrocketed. Ask to play on the course itself, not so much.
“I don’t remember a client coming and asking for a house on the golf course because he plays golf,” said Meir Menahem, a real estate agent at Neot Shiran who specializes in luxury properties. “For most of them it’s because it’s an open view, it’s green and because it puts them in the best spot.”
House prices in Israel rose by more than 10.6 percent in 2021, according to Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics, but in Caesarea, a city of 5,500 about halfway between Tel Aviv and Haifa, agents say an influx of buyers eager wanting to trade their cramped city apartments for houses with pools and gardens has pushed local prices up by more than 30 percent.
For decades, the city – perched on Herodian ruins and blessed with a coastline, manicured green spaces and a national park – has been considered a vacation home hub for wealthy Israelis.
About 35 miles from Tel Aviv, it was seen by many commuters as too far for a dormitory community. The property, largely in the form of outdated villas with swimming pools, often sat vacant for months before Covid-19 rocked the property market.
Now homes overlooking Caesarea’s golf course are among the fastest-valued homes in the country, even for buyers who rarely buy a club.
“I play golf – but only when I’m on vacation,” said Tomer Yariv, who bought a house with his wife Yamit with a view of the golf course and the sea in November for 11.5 million Israeli shekels (about $3.5 million). ). The couple, who both grew up in Haifa and spent two decades in the United States, returned to Israel in 2017 with their three children, now 14, 10 and 5.
“All of Caesarea is beautiful, but around the golf course it’s a little more impressive,” he said. “After 20 years in America, Caesarea was the place that suited us best. It reminded me of America – the size of the bedrooms, the pool in the backyard. It’s clean and organized.”
That may be because Caesarea is run by a private company and not a municipality. Much of the land that is now Caesarea was purchased by Baron Edmond James de Rothschild in the late 1800s, and today the Caesarea Development Corporation, a subsidiary of the Edmond de Rothschild Foundation, operates the town on behalf of the family. (Citizens of Caesarea vote every four years for members of an elected committee that represents their interests.)
The golf course was built in 1961 and was not always considered real estate. Caesarea is divided into 13 neighborhoods, or clusters, three of which—clusters 13, 11, and 9—provide a handful of residences with unobstructed views of the greens. Sales in the golfing neighborhoods were slow, said company president Miki Kleiger, until 2009 — the year the Rothschild family invested 60 million shekels (about $18 million) in a golf club renovation, which involved American golf course architect Pete Dye. enabled. to redesign the course.
“After that, it really became a big attraction, and Cluster 13 became the most sought-after,” said Mr. Kleiger. “There is no doubt that the front line to the gulf has received a lot of help from the grass being extended and there are now 1,000 additional dunams [247 acres] of green landscape.”
Prices in Caesarea for golf course real estate currently start at about 10 million shekels ($3 million) per quarter acre of land. In 2021, just over 100 homes were sold in the city, not counting new construction, and a quarter of those sales went for more than 15 million shekels ($4.5 million), with the rest being between 5 million and 10 million shekels. amount, according to the corporation.
Architect Rina Doctor has designed more than 120 homes in Caesarea, including her own, a modern six-bedroom golf course home with an infinity pool she designed 12 years ago.
“We don’t play golf, but we love living here because it’s like living in nature,” she said. ‘You have birds. You have jackals at night. It is very special to live on the golf course.” Mrs. Doctor is now trying to sell her house. She plans to stay in Caesarea, but her new home will be in a different neighborhood.
“Unfortunately, we can no longer afford a plot on the golf course as all prices have gone up,” she said. She hopes to get 16 million shekels ($4.97 million) for the property.
As prices have risen, so has the number of native Israelis living in Caesarea: While Caesarea was once much loved by foreign-born Jews who bought vacation homes, Mr. Yariv’s family is one of dozens of newcomers to the city who shifting demographics.
“A lot of local Israelis are coming to Caesarea now, unlike in the past when there were a lot of Jewish foreigners, and it’s been a great change,” said Michael Karsenti, the company’s CEO. “A lot of them are upper middle or upper class. They’ve been successful in technology or real estate, and it was really interesting to watch.”
Despite the sharp price increases, Rena Roberman, a real estate agent who lives in Caesarea and works only within the city limits, said she believes buyers are still getting bargains.
“Caesarea has actually been incredibly undervalued for a long time,” she said, comparing it to other affluent waterfront communities in Israel, such as Herzliya and Beit Yanai.
Her husband, Eran Roberman, is a contractor who also works alone in Caesarea, and he estimates that nearly 40 percent of the city’s homes have been demolished or renovated in the past five years.
“When I came to Caesarea 21 years ago, it was a great place, but it was a place of vacation homes that wasn’t lived in,” he said. “Now you have young people who realize that they had a small apartment in Tel Aviv and they could sell that apartment and for what they got, they could get a whole house in Caesarea with a pool.”
But while the story of urban millennials fleeing to greener pastures has played out around the world during the pandemic, Caesarea’s story is a little different, Ms Roberman said. That’s because Caesarea’s golf course is more than a patch of manicured grass in the middle of a city.
In Israel, a country whose population is growing four times faster than other developed countries, according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, Caesarea is a green oasis that doesn’t require moving to a kibbutz or cooperative farm. For homeowners looking for an option that is more rural while still being able to commute to Tel Aviv, the golf course can become a backdrop for all manner of lifestyles.
“I refer to the houses that overlook the golf course as limited edition works of art,” said Ms. Roberman. “If you buy a house two blocks back, it could be anywhere. But for a home for sale that sits on the front row of the golf course in Israel, you can really only have one in 65. That is very special.”
