People in Israel have a consistent appetite for buying and investing in real estate abroad, especially in the United States. It appears that investing in real estate over seas has became a very widespread phenomenon in the past year. We hear almost every day in the news reports about how Israeli has more and more property through off shore investments. Many private investors are buying some properties in American cities as well as publicly traded companies.
Companies in North America like The Leser Group, Extel and Moinian Limited have been able to tap directly into the Israeli capital markets by issuing debt on the TASE to get funds for the projects in real estate. Most of the investments are mainly located in the New York area over the last seven years.
There were an estimated 50 billion shekels or $13.2 billion in the U.S real estate have been put by the Israel institutional investors.
No single investment can exceed to 3% of a portfolio’s value and it also cannot exceed to 15% of all assets under their management. A ministry whose capital markets division monitors institutions’ investment portfolios of these investors, called Finance ministry, creates an upper ceiling on how far the Israeli craze for American property can go, although the benchmarks give investors a lot of room to increase their exposure.
