College city

Beersheba has a vibrant real-estate scene due to its high proportion of students.

By JOHN BENZAQUEN
Shamoun college (photo credit: Courtesy israel bleicher)
Shamoun college
(photo credit: Courtesy israel bleicher)
Last week, I saw an Australian film called The Lighthorsemen. It tells the story of the capture of Beersheba by the Australian Light Horse Brigade, which was part of the British Imperial Army in World War I. The town, if can be called that, is shown as a cluster of buildings built around seven wells. Water was the reason for the capture of the town – water for the thirsty British army on its way to capture Jerusalem.
The film, which was released in 1987, is based on historical fact. On October 31, 1917, 800 soldiers from the Australian 4th and 12th Regiments of the 4th Light Horse Brigade under Brig.-Gen. William Grant charged the Turkish trenches and with bayonets and breached the Turkish defense line between Gaza and Beersheba, capturing the wells. On the edge of Beersheba’s Old City is a British Commonwealth cemetery containing the graves of Australian and British soldiers who fell in the campaign. The town also contains a memorial park dedicated to the 4th Light Horse Brigade.
Located in the northern Negev Desert, Beersheba today has over 200,000 inhabitants and is the seventh-largest city in the country.
The site of the city is linked to the Patriarch Abraham, who, according to the Bible, dug a well, planted a tamarisk tree and tended his flocks in the area. There is no historical evidence of this, and the archeological site of Tel Be’er Sheva is from a much later period.
The city itself was founded in the 19th century by the Turks when it was still part of the Turkish Empire. They made it into a government center with a police station, a small military garrison and, of course, a prison to control the unruly Beduin tribes in the area.
At the beginning of the 20th century, Beersheba was portrayed by Europeans who visited the area as a barren stretch of land with a well and a handful of Beduin living nearby.
The town as we know it today has its beginnings in 1948, when it was captured by the Israeli army and all its 4,000 inhabitants were expelled.
Beersheba has grown considerably since then. A large portion of the population is made up of immigrants from Arab countries – mainly Morocco – who came to Israel during the ’50s and ’60s. During the ’90s, the population was boosted by immigrants from the former USSR and Ethiopia.
Institutes of higher learning, namely Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and the Shamoun College of Engineering, have a strong bearing in the vibrant realestate scene in Beersheba.
Shechuna Alef, one of 17 shechunot (neighborhoods), is currently inhabited by approximately 10,000 people or 3,250 households. It is located in the vicinity of the central bus station, bordered in the northwest by Meshahrerim Avenue, in the east by Regev Avenue and in the south by Tuvia Avenue.
When the government started settling new immigrants in the late ’40s and early ‘50s, it built four transit camps and called them Alef, Bet, Gimmel and Dalet. Alef, a shanty town of wooden tin-roofed huts, was the first transit camp and it was located in the vicinity of the old town in the area of the present central bus station.
In the late ’60s, the government began to upgrade the area. It built four long blocks of flats, each with four entrances and four residential stories.
The upgrade of Ma’abara Alef was not concluded for nearly 20 years. In the early ’90s, Israel experienced large waves of immigration from the USSR, which was then in the process of disintegration. In consequence, eight-story apartment blocks with large four-room apartments were constructed.
Today, private developers are building modern high-rise apartments in Beersheba. The Dimri development company is building the Sokolov Towers, two 28-story residential towers which, when completed in early 2014, will be the highest buildings in the city. More than 200 four- and five-room apartments, lofts, mini-penthouses and penthouses are being built to the very highest technical standards.
Itzik Duev, the Anglo-Saxon concessionaire for all of Beersheba, Omer, Lehavim and Meitar, told Metro, “Demand for real estate in Alef is brisk and because the Shamoun College of Engineering is located in Alef, demand for housing from students is very strong and usually demand outstrips supply. To the best of my knowledge, investment demand for real estate in Beersheba is among the highest in Israel.”
And with good reason: There are approximately 25,000 students in the city, a very large number for a population of 200,000, which works out to 12.5 percent of the population.
An average three-room apartment in Alef can cost NIS 430,000. The annual average rent is NIS 24,000, with an annual yield of nearly 6%. At the current rate of returns on capital, these are excellent yields.
According to rough estimates, 75% of the current population of Alef is made up of students who live in rented accommodation.
Duev added that investment demand “is driving prices up in Alef – not dramatically, but prices are rising nevertheless, and in this area the price is very closely linked to rental yields.
Currently, the average price for a three-room apartment built in the ’60s or ’70s ranges between NIS 400,000 and NIS 440,000. A four-room apartment costs between NIS 550,000 and NIS 600,000. In the newer, eight-story blocks, a four-room apartment costs between NIS 650,000 and NIS 750,000 and a five-room penthouse costs between NIS 950,000 and NIS 1 million.
In the new Dimri Sokolov Tower, a 135- sq.m. apartment costs between NIS 920,000 and NIS 1,050,000.