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SUMMARY
Yes, you can still buy an apartment without a mamad in Israel, but today the missing protected room needs to be compensated for by the price, the location, a genuinely good shelter, or credible redevelopment upside.
The biggest change is not that apartments without mamads suddenly became bad properties. It is that protection has moved much higher up the list of things buyers and tenants think about after repeated missile attacks, including direct attacks from Iran.
The safety difference is partly structural and partly practical. A mamad gives residents reinforced protection inside the apartment, while an alternative shelter may require stairs, common areas and a journey that becomes much more important at night, with children, or for someone with limited mobility.
The market does put a price on that convenience and protection, but there is no clean universal mamad premium. Bank of Israel research found a controlled purchase-price premium of about 8.1% before the war and roughly 6.2% by the end of 2024, while raw Tel Aviv asking-price gaps can look considerably larger because newer buildings often bundle mamads with lifts, parking and better specifications.
Surprisingly, old apartments that usually lack mamads have not been crushed by the market. A large BYNDbiz transaction study found price per square meter in pre-1990 apartments rising 11.2% between 2023 and 2025, versus only 2.6% for apartments from the newer mamad era.
That result makes more sense once location and redevelopment are included. Many old apartments sit on valuable central land in Tel Aviv, Ramat Gan, Givatayim, Jerusalem and other established cities, where buyers may accept weaker protection in exchange for a better street or a realistic path to pinui-binui.
Urban-renewal stories deserve a heavy discount until something has actually happened. A building with organized owners, a selected developer, signed agreements and an advancing plan is very different from one where neighbors have simply been discussing redevelopment for years.
Rental investors should be more cautious than redevelopment investors. Bank of Israel research found that the rental premium for protected apartments increased after the war, suggesting tenants are more willing than long-term buyers to reject an otherwise similar apartment because it lacks a mamad.
Families should also use a tougher standard. An apartment one floor above a maintained building shelter can be workable; an upper-floor apartment in an old walk-up with no clear protected space is a completely different proposition even if both listings technically say “no mamad.”
The worst deal is an ordinary old apartment with poor protection, no credible renewal path and almost no discount. A discounted apartment on an excellent street, with a proper shelter and documented redevelopment progress, can still be a very sensible purchase.
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Why is buying an apartment without a mamad a bigger deal in Israel now?
Buying an apartment without a mamad has become a much more serious compromise in Israel because residents have needed protected spaces repeatedly, including during the latest missile exchanges with Iran.
This has moved the mamad higher up the list of things buyers and renters actually care about. The State Comptroller reported in 2026 that about 3.2 million Israelis, or 33.6% of the population, lacked standard protection such as a mamad, compliant shelter or another approved protected space. That is a huge part of the country, so apartments without mamads remain completely normal. But living without good protection has become much harder to dismiss as a remote inconvenience.
The damage has also stayed very visible. During another round of Iranian missile attacks in 2026, more than 21,000 property-damage claims were filed within roughly a month, including more than 14,000 claims involving buildings. Tel Aviv alone accounted for around 4,500 claims.
That recent experience changes how we should look at an old apartment. A mamad affects what happens during an alert, how easily tenants will rent the property and who may want to buy it later. The apartment can still be attractive, but the price now needs to compensate for a disadvantage people are actively thinking about.
| Recent evidence | Scale | What we learn |
|---|---|---|
| Israelis without standard protection | About 3.2 million | Lack of protection remains widespread |
| Share of population affected | 33.6% | Old unprotected housing is still a major part of the market |
| Property-damage claims in the 2026 Iran war | More than 21,000 | Missile damage remains a current housing risk |
| Building-related claims | More than 14,000 | Residential property has been directly exposed |
| Tel Aviv claims | Around 4,500 | Expensive central areas are clearly exposed too |
How much safer is an apartment with a mamad?
A mamad gives an Israeli apartment a real safety advantage today, mainly because residents can reach reinforced protection immediately without leaving their home.
Home Front Command guidance puts a residential protected room, or mamad, among the preferred protected spaces. A compliant mamad uses reinforced concrete, a protective door and window, and other specifications designed to reduce exposure to blast and shrapnel.
The practical difference can be just as important as the structure itself. During an alert, someone with a mamad walks into another room. Someone relying on a communal shelter may need to leave the apartment, use the stairs and reach another part of the building. A family may have to do that while carrying a sleeping child. An elderly resident may struggle with the route entirely.
Current Home Front Command guidance still allows several alternatives when no mamad exists, including a building shelter, public shelter reachable within the available warning time, suitable internal stairwell and, as a fallback, an interior room. Those options can protect people. They simply give us different levels of convenience and protection.
That is why we would treat the actual shelter arrangement as one of the first things to inspect before buying an apartment without a mamad.
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Can an apartment without a mamad still have good protection?
Yes. An apartment without a mamad can still be perfectly reasonable if the building has a proper shelter that residents can reach quickly.
Home Front Command currently places a suitable building shelter high in its protection hierarchy. Public shelters can also work when residents can reach them within the available warning time. Internal stairwells and interior rooms come further down the hierarchy.
The difference between individual apartments can therefore be huge. A first-floor apartment sitting directly above a maintained building shelter may be quite workable. A sixth-floor apartment in an old walk-up where residents rely on the stairwell is a much bigger compromise.
We should physically walk the route before buying. Check the shelter door, access, lighting, ventilation and whether residents have filled it with bicycles and storage. Time how long the trip takes from the apartment. Then imagine doing the same trip at night with children.
The State Comptroller's latest review makes that inspection more important. Around one-third of Israelis still lack standard protection, and municipal audits have repeatedly found maintenance gaps in shelters. The word “shelter” in a listing therefore tells us very little by itself.
| Apartment situation | Protection in practice | Our view |
|---|---|---|
| Mamad inside apartment | Immediate reinforced space | Best option |
| Good shelter inside building | Strong protection, short journey | Usually acceptable |
| Protected floor space | Purpose-built and close | Usually acceptable |
| Suitable internal stairwell | Useful fallback | Meaningful compromise |
| Public shelter very close | Depends on warning time and access | Check carefully |
| Public shelter farther away | May be impractical | Major weakness |
| No clear protected space | Poor | Usually a reason to walk away |
Do Israeli buyers actually pay more for an apartment with a mamad?
Yes, Israeli buyers pay a measurable premium for apartments with mamads, although recent evidence shows that the premium is smaller and less predictable than the headlines often suggest.
A Bank of Israel study compared similar apartments and tracked the mamad premium through the recent war period. Before the war, the estimated premium in completed purchase transactions was about 8.1%. By the end of 2024, it had fallen to around 6.2%.
That result surprised many people. Security concerns had increased sharply, yet buyers were still weighing location, building age, redevelopment potential, size and longer-term expectations alongside protection.
The picture shifted somewhat after later Iranian missile attacks. Bank of Israel's preliminary follow-up found a modest increase in both sale and rental asking-price premiums, although researchers said the early increase was not yet statistically clear.
Current Tel Aviv asking-price data point in roughly the same direction without giving us a clean “price of a mamad.” In a July 2026 sample from the Tel Aviv Property Report, listings mentioning a mamad had a median asking price around 11.8% higher than listings without one. Once apartments were compared more closely by neighborhood, lift and parking, the gap narrowed considerably. A large part of the raw premium was really the value of newer buildings and better amenities.
So we should never automatically add 10% to a valuation because an apartment has a mamad. The cleaner evidence suggests the mamad itself carries value, but the exact amount varies heavily by apartment.
| Comparison | Mamad premium |
|---|---|
| Bank of Israel completed sales before the war | About 8.1% |
| Bank of Israel completed sales by end-2024 | About 6.2% |
| Tel Aviv 2026 raw asking-price gap | 11.8% |
| Tel Aviv gap after closer amenity comparisons | Roughly 5%-8% in several comparisons |
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Are old apartments without mamads actually losing value?
No. Old Israeli apartments without mamads have recently performed surprisingly well, which is probably the strongest argument against using the mamad as an automatic deal-breaker.
A 2026 analysis by valuation platform BYNDbiz examined roughly 111,000 second-hand transactions reported to the Israel Tax Authority. It separated apartments built before 1990, which generally lack mamads, from apartments built between 1996 and 2022, where mamads are normally present.
Between 2023 and 2025, price per square meter in the older group rose by 11.2%. The newer group increased only 2.6%.
The same broad pattern appeared in 27 of the 35 cities where the researchers had enough transactions to compare. Over that period, the price premium enjoyed by newer mamad-era apartments narrowed.
That does not prove buyers suddenly stopped caring about protection. Older buildings carry other valuable characteristics, especially central locations and urban-renewal potential. Those advantages were strong enough to outweigh the missing mamad in many completed transactions.
As of now, the market is giving us a fairly clear answer: an apartment can perform very well without a mamad when buyers see enough value elsewhere.
Why would buyers want old apartments without mamads?
Older apartments without mamads can be attractive because some give buyers access to land, locations and redevelopment upside that newer apartments cannot offer at the same price.
This is especially relevant in established parts of Tel Aviv, Givatayim, Ramat Gan, Jerusalem and other built-up cities. Many old buildings occupy valuable plots developed decades ago at relatively low density. Redevelopment can eventually replace an old apartment with a larger modern unit containing a mamad, lift and upgraded building infrastructure.
Urban renewal is also becoming a larger part of Israeli housing policy. A State Comptroller report published in 2026 counted 814 pinui-binui projects containing almost 480,000 proposed housing units as of mid-2025. Around 58% of those projects were located in the Central and Tel Aviv districts.
Approved supply is growing too. Around 57,000 housing units were approved through evacuation-and-rebuild plans in 2024, roughly 40% more than a year earlier.
Those numbers explain why buyers place real option value on certain old apartments. They also show why we need to stay selective. The 814-project total includes projects at very different stages, from early planning to actual execution.
An old apartment with a signed developer, advanced plan and strong municipal support can deserve a redevelopment premium. A building where neighbors occasionally talk about pinui-binui deserves very little.
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How real does urban renewal need to be before we pay extra for it?
We should only pay meaningful money for Israeli urban-renewal potential once the project has moved beyond wishful thinking and left a paper trail we can verify.
This is one of the easiest places to overpay for an apartment without a mamad. Almost every owner of an old building can tell a story about future redevelopment.
The numbers show how slowly that story can turn into construction. Israel has around 810,000 apartments in multi-story buildings constructed before mandatory earthquake-resistance standards. The State Comptroller said only about 10% of the apartments requiring strengthening had been approved for urban-renewal programs.
A more recent State Comptroller review also found huge regional differences. Israel had almost 480,000 proposed units across 814 pinui-binui projects, yet 58% of the projects were concentrated in Tel Aviv and the Central district. In four northern cities examined — Beit She'an, Tiberias, Safed and Kiryat Shmona — 23 projects promoted between 2017 and 2025 had produced zero building permits.
We would therefore look for increasingly concrete steps: organized owners, a lawyer representing them, a selected developer, signed agreements, a formally promoted plan, planning approvals and eventually a permit.
The further the building has moved through that sequence, the more redevelopment value we can reasonably include in today's price.
| Redevelopment stage | How much value should we give it? |
|---|---|
| Neighbors discussing the idea | Almost none |
| Owners organized and represented | Small speculative value |
| Developer selected | Some value, still uncertain |
| Meaningful share of owners signed | More credible |
| Formal planning underway | Material value |
| Plan approved | Strong value |
| Building permit close or issued | Much easier to price |
Can I just add a mamad after buying an old apartment?
Sometimes, but we should never buy an old Israeli apartment on the casual assumption that adding a mamad later will be straightforward.
Israel has made it easier to expand protected-space capacity since the war began, including expedited procedures in certain cases and lower consent thresholds for some additions in shared buildings.
Physical constraints still decide whether a project works. A mamad is a reinforced structural addition. The apartment needs a workable location for it, engineering must support the design, planning rules still apply, and neighboring apartments may need to coordinate if rooms are being added vertically.
Costs also run well beyond an ordinary renovation. Depending on the building, design and structural work, permanent mamad additions can reach well into six figures in shekels.
So if adding a mamad is part of our reason for buying, we should have an architect or structural engineer assess feasibility before the purchase. A seller saying “everyone adds one now” carries no value in our underwriting.
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Are apartments without mamads harder to rent in Israel now?
Yes. The rental market currently punishes apartments without mamads more clearly than the purchase market does.
Bank of Israel research provides the cleanest evidence. Looking at rental listings through the end of 2024, researchers found that the mamad rental premium rose substantially after the war began and accelerated after Iran's first direct missile attack in 2024.
From May through the end of that year, the estimated premium was roughly four percentage points higher than during the nine months before the war.
Completed sale prices behaved differently. The mamad premium in purchase transactions actually fell from about 8.1% before the war to around 6.2% by the end of 2024.
The difference makes sense when we look at how people make each decision. A buyer may accept an old apartment for its location or redevelopment potential and hold it for 15 years. A renter choosing somewhere for the next year has far less reason to accept repeated trips to a stairwell when a similar protected apartment is available.
If our main strategy is long-term rental income, we should be stricter about buying without a mamad than a redevelopment investor would be.
| Market | What happened to the mamad premium? | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Completed apartment sales | Fell from about 8.1% to 6.2% through 2024 | Buyers still valued other long-term factors |
| Rental asking prices | Rose materially | Tenants became more protection-sensitive |
| Rental premium after May 2024 | About 4 percentage points above prewar level | Iranian attacks changed rental preferences |
| Early later-war evidence | Premium moved up again | Security shocks can quickly change demand |
Will I struggle to resell an apartment without a mamad?
A good apartment without a mamad can still resell perfectly well today, but its buyer pool is likely to be narrower than that of an equally attractive protected apartment.
The recent transaction data prove that older apartments remain liquid enough to appreciate. BYNDbiz found stronger 2023-2025 price growth in its pre-1990 group than among newer mamad-era apartments across most of the cities it studied.
The longer-term direction is less comfortable.
Every new residential building adds protected stock. Urban renewal removes old buildings and replaces them with modern apartments containing mamads. Over time, buyers should have more protected alternatives.
The problem will probably appear first in ordinary apartments with no special reason to compromise. A beautiful old apartment on a prime Tel Aviv street can remain highly desirable. A generic old apartment on an average street, without a mamad, lift, parking or redevelopment path, may increasingly struggle against newer competition.
This makes the expected holding period important. For a short investment, current market conditions dominate. For a 15- or 20-year family purchase, we should think about how old and unprotected the building may look when we eventually sell it.
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Should families with children buy an apartment without a mamad?
Families with young children should usually prefer an apartment with a mamad unless the alternative protection inside the building is exceptionally convenient.
Recent alerts have made the practical difference obvious. Moving into a mamad means crossing the apartment. Reaching another protected space may involve waking children, carrying them through common areas and doing the same thing again during repeated nighttime alerts.
Home Front Command currently tells residents without a mamad or shelter to use an appropriate internal stairwell or interior room according to the building and floor. Those are recognised protective options, but the experience is clearly different from having reinforced protection beside the bedroom.
Floor level can change the calculation significantly. A family on the first floor with a maintained communal shelter immediately below may reasonably accept the compromise. A family on an upper floor of an old walk-up faces a much worse setup.
We would apply the same logic even more strongly when someone in the household has limited mobility.
For a family home, a slightly cheaper purchase price rarely compensates for poor protection on its own. The apartment needs to offer something genuinely difficult to replace, such as a much better location, considerably more space or a very strong redevelopment position.
Does government compensation make buying without a mamad less risky?
Government compensation reduces the financial risk of missile damage to an Israeli apartment, although owners can still face displacement, delays and disputes after a serious hit.
Israel's Property Tax Compensation Fund covers qualifying direct war damage to buildings, and the system has processed enormous volumes of claims during the recent conflicts.
By the end of March 2025, the State Comptroller recorded 45,798 claims involving direct building damage during the Swords of Iron War. Around 95% had resulted in compensation, totaling roughly NIS 1.5 billion, and 1,342 buildings had sustained significant damage.
Another wave arrived in 2026. Within about a month of renewed war with Iran, more than 21,000 property claims were filed, including over 14,000 involving structural damage. Thousands of people were temporarily evacuated.
The experience also exposed the friction behind the headline coverage. Residents of damaged homes can spend months away from their property, and unusual legal situations can complicate compensation. A 2026 Knesset hearing on missile damage in Beit Shemesh, for example, examined cases where historic building irregularities led to partial compensation disputes.
So the state system is valuable when assessing catastrophic financial loss. It does very little for the daily inconvenience of shelter access or the personal safety decision that exists before a missile hits.
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How much cheaper should an apartment without a mamad be?
An apartment without a mamad should be meaningfully cheaper than a genuinely comparable protected apartment unless it gives us something equally valuable in return.
There is no universal discount because comparing an old building with a new building mixes too many things together. Bank of Israel's best controlled transaction estimate put the mamad premium around 8.1% before the war and 6.2% by the end of 2024. Recent Tel Aviv asking-price data show raw gaps above 10%, but much of that disappears after controlling more closely for location, lifts and parking.
The right calculation therefore starts with comparable transactions on nearby streets.
Suppose an unprotected apartment costs NIS 3 million. A 6% difference is NIS 180,000; 8% is NIS 240,000. On a NIS 5 million apartment, the same range becomes NIS 300,000 to NIS 400,000.
Those are large enough numbers to change the decision.
We should then adjust for the specific building. A good shelter downstairs reduces the disadvantage. Advanced urban renewal can add substantial upside. A superior street can easily matter more than the mamad itself. Poor shelter access and no renewal prospects push us in the other direction.
If two apartments are genuinely similar and the unprotected one is only marginally cheaper, we would buy the apartment with the mamad.
Is an apartment without a mamad actually a good investment?
An apartment without a mamad can still be a very good Israeli property investment today, especially when we are buying redevelopment potential or a location that newer buildings cannot match cheaply.
The latest transaction evidence is strong enough that we should avoid treating old unprotected stock as damaged goods. The 111,000-transaction BYNDbiz study found 11.2% cumulative price-per-square-meter growth from 2023 through 2025 for pre-1990 apartments, compared with just 2.6% for the newer mamad-era group.
As seen above, rental evidence points the other way. Bank of Israel found a clear increase in the premium tenants were willing to pay for protected apartments during the war.
Those two results give us a useful dividing line.
A landlord who mainly wants stable rental demand should usually favor the mamad unless the yield advantage on the older apartment is compelling. A buyer targeting urban renewal can rationally accept the missing mamad because the future apartment may eventually include one anyway. An owner-occupier can compromise when the building has excellent alternative protection and the location or price advantage is large.
The worst investment is an average old apartment with poor protection, no serious redevelopment path and no meaningful discount. There is very little upside paying us for the weakness.
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Should I buy an apartment without a mamad in Israel?
Yes, but only when the apartment gives us a clear reason to accept the missing mamad. For an ordinary apartment at an ordinary price, we would choose the protected one today.
The evidence no longer supports the simple idea that every apartment without a mamad is a bad asset. Older unprotected apartments rose 11.2% per square meter between 2023 and 2025 in the large BYNDbiz transaction study, far ahead of newer mamad-era apartments. Israel's massive urban-renewal pipeline also gives selected old buildings genuine upside.
At the same time, recent missile attacks have made the weakness much more tangible. Roughly one-third of Israelis still lacked standard protection in the latest State Comptroller review, thousands of buildings have suffered war damage, and Bank of Israel research shows tenants now pay a noticeably larger premium for protected apartments.
Our threshold should therefore depend on what we are buying.
For a family home, we would strongly prefer a mamad or a very good shelter inside the building. For a rental investment, the apartment without a mamad needs to compensate us with better yield, a lower purchase price or unusually strong location. For an advanced urban-renewal opportunity, buying without a mamad can make complete sense.
A cheap apartment with no mamad, poor shelter access and vague promises of future pinui-binui would be an easy pass.
A discounted old apartment on an excellent street, with a proper building shelter and documented redevelopment progress, is a completely different proposition. We would happily consider buying it.
So the answer today is yes, an apartment without a mamad can still be worth buying in Israel. But the missing protected room now needs to be paid for somewhere else in the deal.
OUR METHODOLOGY
This analysis tests whether buying an apartment without a mamad in Israel still makes sense today. We separated the question into physical protection, purchase pricing, rental demand, resale performance, urban-renewal potential, the feasibility of adding a mamad later, and the financial consequences of war damage.
We prioritized recent evidence wherever the market could have changed materially after October 2023 and after the direct Iranian missile attacks. Completed transactions, asking prices and rental listings were treated separately because each answers a different question and they should not be mixed into one headline mamad premium.
Bank of Israel research is the main source for the controlled mamad premium in purchase prices and rents. We use its transaction work to judge how much buyers have historically paid for a protected room and its rental analysis to understand how tenant preferences changed after the war.
For protection itself, we relied on Home Front Command guidance and official civil-defense specifications, while State Comptroller reports were used for the share of Israelis without standard protection, shelter shortcomings, older housing exposure and the scale and progress of urban renewal.
The BYNDbiz analysis of roughly 111,000 second-hand transactions, reported by Globes and based on Israel Tax Authority data, is used for a different purpose. It does not isolate the value of a mamad. It helps test whether older apartments that generally lack mamads have actually underperformed since the war once the rest of the property package is allowed to matter.
Current Tel Aviv asking-price data from The Tel Aviv Property Report were used as a live market check rather than as a substitute for completed sales. The raw gap between listings with and without mamads was therefore treated cautiously because newer protected apartments also tend to have lifts, parking and other features that affect price.
For redevelopment, we gave much more weight to documented progress than to the existence of a proposal. State Comptroller data on pinui-binui projects, approvals and regional execution gaps were used to distinguish a building with a credible renewal path from one where redevelopment remains mostly a story told by owners.
Official Planning Administration and Knesset material were used for the post-war rules that can make mamad additions easier in qualifying buildings. We still treat technical feasibility as building-specific because structural design, planning constraints and coordination with neighboring apartments can determine whether an addition is realistic.
War-damage risk was assessed using State Comptroller data, Israel Tax Authority Compensation Fund rules and Knesset material on compensation disputes. Compensation was treated as protection against part of the financial loss after damage, not as a substitute for having accessible physical protection during an alert.
Key sources used for this analysis include Bank of Israel research on the mamad premium in apartment prices and rents, the full Bank of Israel research paper, the State Comptroller review of protection and shelter coverage, the Israel Tax Authority real-estate transaction database, Globes on the BYNDbiz transaction study, The Tel Aviv Property Report on current mamad asking-price differences, the State Comptroller's urban-renewal review, Planning Administration guidance on the mamad permit-exemption route, and the Israel Tax Authority Compensation Fund.
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