Buying property in Israel from abroad is possible with the right local team. The process typically involves choosing a property, appointing an Israeli lawyer, completing due diligence, signing remotely, handling taxes and payments, and registering the property in your name.
Buying property in Israel without setting foot in the country isn't unusual. A large share of Israeli real estate transactions each year involve buyers living in London, New York, Paris, Toronto, or Johannesburg, diaspora investors, future olim planning a purchase ahead of aliyah, or simply people who want exposure to the Israeli market without relocating there first. What's unusual is how little practical guidance exists on what the process actually involves once you decide to do it.
This is a step-by-step walk-through of that process, from choosing where to buy to holding the keys, or, more accurately, the registered title, without ever needing to land at Ben Gurion.
Before anything else, be honest about the goal, because it shapes almost every decision downstream. A holiday apartment you'll use two months a year is a different purchase than a rental investment bought purely for yield, which is different again from a property bought ahead of an eventual aliyah. Each has different tax treatment, different financing options, and different cities that make sense.
Tel Aviv and Jerusalem carry the highest prices and the deepest resale liquidity. Herzliya, Netanya, and Ra'anana are popular with buyers who are looking for the beach or a strong Anglo and French community, respectively, without Tel Aviv's price tag.
Jerusalem's German Colony, Rechavia, and Talbiya draw a particular kind of buyer focused on long-term hold and lifestyle rather than yield. None of this is a recommendation; it's simply the first filter that narrows a very wide market into something you can actually evaluate from abroad.
This is the step most foreign buyers get wrong, because it doesn't map onto how property transactions work in the UK or the US. There's no equivalent of a US title company running the closing, and no UK-style solicitor who only gets involved once you've found a property.
Transactions in Israel are run almost entirely by lawyers, an advocate for the buyer and a separate one for the seller, and that lawyer's job starts well before you've picked a property, not after.
Your lawyer needs to be someone comfortable working entirely by video call, email, and power of attorney, especially because you’re abroad. This is because you likely won't be in the room for viewings, signing, or registration, and before you look seriously at a single listing, your lawyer should already understand your residency status, your financing plan, and whether you're likely to qualify for any reduced tax treatment, because all three affect which properties are worth pursuing in the first place.
Israeli banks do lend to non-residents, but the terms are meaningfully different from a resident's first-home mortgage. Where an Israeli resident buying a first home can often borrow up to around 75% loan-to-value, non-residents are typically capped closer to 50%. That single number changes what's actually affordable, so it's worth confirming with a bank or mortgage broker before, not after, you start viewing properties in a price range you may not be able to finance.
The bigger question for cash buyers is currency exposure. Moving a large sum from euros, pounds, or dollars into shekels at a single point in time means the exchange rate on that day effectively becomes part of your purchase price. Some buyers stagger transfers or use a currency specialist rather than their retail bank to manage this; either way, it's a decision worth making deliberately rather than as an afterthought once contracts are already signed.
You'll need one. Purchase tax, legal fees, and eventually the property itself will move through an Israeli account, and Israeli banks apply full anti-money-laundering documentation requirements to new non-resident accounts, a certified passport copy, proof of address, and a declaration of the source of the funds you're bringing in, at minimum.
Some banks will open an account remotely through a branch that specializes in overseas clients; others still expect an in-person visit or a video-verified process arranged through your lawyer. This is worth starting early, because it's not unusual for the account-opening process alone to take several weeks, and it shouldn't be the thing holding up an otherwise-ready transaction.
This is more normal than it sounds. Video walkthroughs, either live over a call or pre-recorded by a local agent, have become standard practice for foreign buyers, and a lawyer or buyer's representative on the ground can flag things a camera won't, noise from a nearby road, the state of the building's shared areas, whether the seller seems motivated or is fishing for offers. If you're buying off-plan from a developer rather than an existing resale property, the process shifts again: you're reviewing floor plans, developer contracts, and payment schedules tied to construction milestones rather than assessing a finished building.
Once you have a property you're serious about, your lawyer pulls an extract from the Land Registry (the Tabu) to confirm who legally owns the property, if there's an existing mortgage or lien registered against it, and if the registered details match what you've been told. Some properties, particularly in parts of Jerusalem and the Negev, sit on land leased from the Israel Lands Authority rather than privately owned freehold, a meaningfully different legal position that needs to be understood before you commit, not discovered afterward.
There’s more to due diligence than simply checking the title. You’ll also want to make sure any building work or alterations were properly permitted, check for outstanding betterment levies (hetel hashbacha), and review any existing tenancy arrangements. For apartments, the vaad bayit accounts can also reveal unpaid fees or major works that new owners may soon have to pay for.
Israel doesn't have a UK-style "exchange of contracts" moment that's separate from the initial agreement. Once both sides sign the purchase agreement, it's binding, so there's no cooling-off period in the way some other jurisdictions build one in.
A deposit is typically in the region of 10% of the purchase price, and that is paid on signing, with the balance due at agreed milestones through to completion. Because signing is binding immediately, due diligence needs to be substantially complete before that moment, not treated as something to sort out afterward.
You almost certainly won't be in Israel to sign in person, which is where a limited power of attorney (yipui koach) comes in. This is a specific, narrowly scoped document authorizing your Israeli lawyer to sign the contract, make the tax filing, and handle registration on your behalf, not a blanket authorization to act generally in your name.
It typically needs to be signed in front of a notary in your home country and, depending on the country, apostilled or otherwise legalized before it's valid for use in Israel. This is one of the easiest steps to underestimate the timeline on: getting a notary appointment, obtaining an apostille, and shipping or scanning the document back can take longer than buyers expect, so our tip is to start the moment you're seriously committed to a specific property rather than waiting until the week of signing.
This is the cost that catches the most foreign buyers off guard. Israeli residents buying their only home benefit from a 0% purchase tax band on the first roughly ₪1.9 million of the price, with modest rates above that. Non-residents don't get that band. As of 2026, foreign buyers pay purchase tax (mas rechisha) starting at 8% on the full value up to approximately ₪6,055,070, rising to 10% above that threshold, from the first shekel, not just the portion above a lower band.
On a ₪3,000,000 apartment, that's a purchase tax bill of roughly ₪240,000, against perhaps a tenth of that for a resident buying their only home. This has to be modeled into your budget from the outset, not discovered at the point of signing. The purchase tax declaration must be filed with the Israel Tax Authority within 30 days of signing, with payment due within 60 days, your lawyer handles the filing, but the money needs to be in place on your timeline, not theirs.
Funds typically move by international wire into your Israeli account or your lawyer's trust account, and Israeli banks will want documentation showing where the money originated, particularly for larger transfers. This isn't a formality to brush past, an incomplete source-of-funds file is one of the more common reasons a transfer gets held up at exactly the point you need it to clear. Timing the transfer against the exchange rate, and against the payment milestones set out in your contract, is one of the best ways to coordinate with the properly rather than wiring funds reactively each time a payment is due.
The final step is registering the transfer of ownership at the Land Registry (or with the Israel Lands Authority, for leasehold land), which is what actually makes you the legal owner on record rather than simply a party to a signed contract. Your lawyer handles the registration filing, and this is typically the last box to tick before the transaction is genuinely complete.
From first serious diligence to registered title, a straightforward resale transaction usually runs in the range of two to four months for a foreign buyer, longer than a domestic Israeli purchase, mostly because of the extra steps around power of attorney, cross-border fund transfers, and bank account setup, not because the underlying legal process is more complex.
Owning a property in Israel from abroad means there are a few ongoing costs to keep in mind. You’ll pay arnona, the local municipal property tax, and if you own an apartment, you’ll also have vaad bayit maintenance fees.
Renting the property out comes with its own tax considerations, with non-resident landlords generally able to choose between a flat 15% tax on gross rental income or paying tax at marginal rates based on net income after eligible expenses.
So with that being said, the right option depends on your individual situation. You’ll also want to understand mas shevach, or capital gains tax, even though it only becomes relevant when you sell.
Almost every problem foreign buyers run into with Israeli property comes down to sequencing, which is usually opening the bank account too late, getting the power of attorney notarized after signing rather than before, discovering the leasehold status of a Jerusalem property after falling in love with it, or budgeting for a resident's purchase tax rate instead of a foreign buyer's. None of these are complicated on their own. They're just easy to get wrong when you're managing them individually, from a different time zone, without someone coordinating the whole sequence.
This is precisely what we do at THE HUB for buyers purchasing Israeli property from abroad. We don’t just find the property, but we also run the entity, banking, legal, tax, and registration steps as one coordinated process from the first conversation through to registered title, so nothing is left to be discovered after the fact.
Are you ready to discover your dream property in Israel?
This guide reflects Israeli property law, purchase tax rates, and market practice as understood as of mid-2026 and is intended for general informational purposes only. Purchase tax brackets are adjusted periodically and should be confirmed against the Israel Tax Authority's current published rates before any transaction. This does not constitute legal, tax, or financial advice. Prospective buyers should obtain specific advice from qualified Israeli legal and tax counsel before proceeding with any acquisition.
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