Gindi Holdings has launched one of the most aggressive developer incentives Israel has seen in this downturn. Buyers in four central-Israel projects can defer NIS 900,000 of the purchase price for a full decade after receiving their keys, with no interest and no indexation. For both local and overseas buyers, the offer looks very attractive, but as with every incentive, it carries risk. Here is how the deal works, why it is happening now, and what buyers need to check before signing.
Israel’s new-build market has been sluggish for long enough that developer promotions no longer make headlines on their own. Gindi Holdings’ latest offer is different. The company has launched a campaign that lets buyers defer NIS 900,000 of a new apartment’s price for ten years from key handover, interest-free and unlinked to any index. The offer was first rolled out through WhatsApp messages to existing Gindi leads, followed by a billboard campaign.
The deferred payment plan covers roughly 300 unsold apartments across four projects: Galil Yam in Herzliya, Ramat Efal and Kfar Azar in Ramat Gan, and Neve Ayalon in Or Yehuda, near the Ramat Pinkas neighborhood. About half of the participating inventory is in Galil Yam, where average apartment prices are around NIS 4 to 5 million and, according to reports, 150 of the project’s 505 units are still unsold. For anyone watching the Israeli real estate market from abroad, the offer is worth understanding in detail, both for what it could mean for an individual purchase and for what it shows about the balance of power between buyers and developers right now.
How the Ten-Year Deferral Actually Works
The deferred payment plan is simpler than it first sounds. Buyers pay 20% of the price when they sign the contract. Most of the rest is due at key handover, but NIS 900,000 of that balance is pushed back ten years. For an average apartment in the campaign, this works out to about 20% at signing, roughly 50% at delivery, and around 30% a decade later. The payments are also not linked to the construction cost index, which normally makes off-plan payments rise during the building period, so removing it is a real concession.
Most of the projects are expected to be completed in about a year and a half, so in practice the final payment falls around twelve years after signing. Gindi is not lending the money itself. The financing is provided through Bank Leumi and Mizrahi Tefahot. Buyers must pass a bank underwriting process that checks whether they can repay, and Gindi covers the interest, at an estimated cost of about NIS 450,000 per apartment, or around NIS 135 million if every unit in the campaign sells. Gindi, for its part, estimates that buyers could save around NIS 700,000 in the long-term on mortgage costs compared with financing the same amount through a conventional loan.
In financial terms, this is a balloon loan: a large lump sum due at the end of a long period, with no payments along the way. What makes it unusual is the term and the pricing. Israeli banks do not offer ordinary retail buyers a decade-long interest-free balloon, so in effect Gindi is buying down the cost of capital to move inventory.
What the Apartments Cost Under the Offer
Gindi has published starting prices for each participating project alongside its own comparisons with nearby resale values. In Galil Yam, five-room apartments start at NIS 4.2 million. Gindi says comparable homes in the neighborhood trade at NIS 5.3 to 5.7 million. In Kfar Azar in Ramat Gan, where the company is building a 33-story tower alongside a nine-story building with three- to five-room units and penthouses, 3.5-room apartments start at NIS 2.7 million against what Gindi says is a local range of NIS 3.5 to 3.6 million. At Neve Ayalon, part of which is already occupied, four-room apartments start at NIS 2.1 million. The project sits near the Mesubim junction, Route 461, and the planned route of the Purple Line light rail. Ramat Efal, near Sheba Medical Center, has already sold more than 470 units.
These are central-Israel addresses that have long appealed to buyers both in Israel and from abroad. Herzliya in particular has a well-established English-speaking community and draws families from North America, the UK, and France. Proximity to Sheba is a practical draw for retirees and for olim planning a long-term base. On paper, the combination of below-market starting prices and deferred capital is strong.
Gindi Has Moved the Market Before
This is not the first time Gindi has tried to jolt a slow market. In June 2025, the company launched its Vogue project in Sde Dov, the former airport site in north Tel Aviv, with prices starting at NIS 49,000 per square meter. As reported at the time, that was roughly 35% below prevailing rates in the neighborhood, and hundreds of units sold within days. That campaign competed on price. This one competes on financing. Both reflect the same strategy: a large developer willing to accept thinner margins in exchange for volume and momentum.
Why Developers Are Going This Far
The market backdrop explains the urgency. According to the Central Bureau of Statistics, close to 86,000 new apartments remained unsold at the end of August 2026. At the current sales pace, that inventory would take roughly 27 months to clear. Transaction volumes tell a similar story. A Finance Ministry chief economist review published in October found that since the start of the 2000s, only three years recorded fewer August transactions than 2026: 2002 and 2003, during the Second Intifada, and 2011, at the height of the social-justice tent protests. Developers sold around 3,300 new apartments nationwide that month. Put simply, Gindi is trying to sell in a short window about 10% of what the entire industry sold in a month.
Until late 2025, the most common incentive was the 80/20 structure, where buyers paid 10–20% at signing and the rest at delivery. The Bank of Israel restricted those schemes and capped developer-subsidized balloon loans at 10% of each bank’s quarterly mortgage lending, under a temporary order that runs through the end of 2026. Developers have since adapted, and many incentives have returned in modified form.
Some of those offers have been striking. Azorim has offered buyers a developer loan of up to NIS 1 million with no interest, no indexation, and no monthly repayments for ten years. Enav has offered 0% interest on the mortgage for 15 years in a Kfar Saba project. In Tel Aviv, the Hagag Group is letting buyers at its Infinity tower pay NIS 1 million at signing, move in within about a year, and pay the balance roughly three years later, with no interest, no indexation, and no need for a mortgage in the interim.
The pattern is clear. Developers are absorbing financing costs that would once have been the buyer’s problem, which is a sign of how much negotiating power has shifted. It is hard to imagine seeing such offers when the market was hot.
The Risks Behind the Headline Number
None of this makes the offer free money. A deferred payment plan moves a large liability into the future. It does not remove it. Two risks are obvious. The first is a fall in the apartment’s value, which would leave a buyer owing a fixed sum against a smaller asset. The second is a drop in income over the decade, through job loss, a business setback, or retirement. Gindi’s counterpoint is that the deferred amount stays fixed while the home may appreciate. That holds only if prices rise, and nobody can promise that.
For overseas buyers, there is a third risk that Israeli coverage rarely mentions: currency. If you earn in dollars, pounds, or euros, a NIS 900,000 debt due in ten years is an open currency position. A stronger shekel over that period could make the final payment noticeably more expensive in your home currency, and the reverse could make it cheaper. Either way, you are taking on exposure you should plan for deliberately, whether by setting funds aside gradually, hedging, or matching the obligation to future shekel income if you plan to make aliyah.
There is also a practical question of eligibility. The deferred amount is a bank loan subject to underwriting, and Israeli banks generally lend less to non-residents. Foreign residents are typically limited to financing about half of a property’s value. Before falling in love with the numbers, overseas buyers should confirm directly with the participating banks whether non-residents qualify for the ten-year component, on what terms, and how foreign income will be assessed. The answer may be very different for a non-resident investor than for someone who has already made aliyah and has Israeli income.
What This Means for Buyers Abroad
The bigger story is not one developer’s campaign. It is that Israel’s new-build market has clearly become a buyer’s market, and well-prepared buyers have more leverage today than at any time in recent years. For Jews abroad weighing a move home, whether for Zionist reasons, because of rising antisemitism where they live, or to give their children a foothold in Israel, this is a period when patient, well-advised buyers can negotiate terms that were out of reach two or three years ago.
That leverage is only valuable if you use it carefully. Read the full contract with an Israeli real estate lawyer, not just the marketing material. Get an independent appraisal rather than relying on the developer’s comparisons. Model the final balloon payment in your own currency. Confirm bank eligibility as a non-resident or new oleh in writing. And treat any deferred payment plan as one tool among several, not the reason to buy. The right apartment in the right location, on terms that hold up under a pessimistic scenario, is still the goal.
The Buyitinisrael Editorial team is made up of industry experts, journalists, researchers, editors, and translators working together to deliver reliable, up-to-date information about the Israeli property market — all in English. With a strong focus on transparency and accessibility, our goal is to empower English-speaking buyers by helping them understand the market and navigate the real estate process with clarity and confidence.
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