Disgruntled homeowners

June 23, 2008 - 7:15 PM by Jessica · 2 Comments
Filed under: Business, General, Israeliness

It’s said that buying or renovating a home is one of the most stressful times in life, right up there with the death of a loved one, moving houses and switching jobs. For the estimated 4,700 families in Israel affected by the bankrupt Heftsiba construction company, one can only imagine how they must be feeling, particularly those who lost their money and future apartments.

One disgruntled Heftsiba customer commented that while former Heftsiba CEO Boaz Yona has offered to give back NIS 4 million, that only comes to NIS 854 per family. Not a whole lot of cash-flow when your mortgage money is gone or you’re looking at unfinished walls and floors.
Clearly, homeowner and construction disasters happen in the States and Europe; look at the current foreclosure crisis in the U.S.; different in nature, similar in effect. But given the number of home renovations in Israel — a country with one of the highest homeownership rates, at 75% and higher — it’s unsettling to hear about the odd construction company that defrauds new homeowners, or the independent contractors who can make life extraordinarily difficult for the homeowner looking to gut their home, or carry out a partial renovation.

I’m thinking of friends who have been out of their home since last August and are suing their former contractor, while waiting for their house to be finished. Or my mother-in-law, who decided to renovate the apartment she’s owned since 1971, and which desperately needed some updating. Six months and two contractors later, we’ve got a missing kablan (Hebrew for contractor), lost funds, and a woman who’s really tired of living out of her kids’ homes.

Clearly, none of this is the end of the world, and the end of the renovation brings happy homeowners back to fab-o, like-new apartments. I’m also hoping that the former Heftsiba customers find a way out of their mess. As for my mother-in-law, and all the other post-renovation homeowners, they have to make nice to their neighbors and find a way to make them forget that they’ve been living in a construction zone for months on end…

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