The Volume of New Mortgage Loans in 'Israel' in May is Approximately 9.7 Billion Shekels

SadaNews Economy - The mortgage loan acquisition rate in 2026 in 'Israel' remains high: According to data from the Bank of Israel published today, Wednesday, new mortgage loans totaling approximately 9.687 billion Israeli shekels were granted in May, according to a Hebrew report in the "Globes" newspaper, translated by SadaNews.

In the previous month, April 2026, and due to the "Passover" holiday, the volume of mortgages dropped by about 22% to approximately 7.9 billion shekels - an amount that is still considered very high, given that the number of loans obtained during the holiday is naturally lower.

According to the data, since the beginning of 2026, new mortgage loans amounting to approximately 46 billion Israeli shekels have been granted over five months. This represents an annual rate of about 110 billion Israeli shekels for this year.

For comparison, the volume of new mortgage loans issued in the first five months of 2025 was about 41 billion shekels, while in the first five months of 2024 it was about 30 billion shekels. In fact, the volume of new mortgage loans issued in the first five months of the year has only exceeded this figure in the exceptional year of 2022, which saw unprecedented record figures.

There are Two Main Reasons

These numbers contrast with sales figures in the residential sector, especially new apartments, where the volume of transactions has continued to decline over the course of a year. So how is the volume of mortgage loans so high?

One of the main reasons, according to the SadaNews translation, is the financing operations carried out by contractors, which postpone the repayment of the principal of the debt and obtaining the mortgage for several years - thus it is very likely that many of the mortgages being obtained now are "translations" of the same transactions that were carried out a year, two, or three years ago as part of the contractors’ operations.

Another explanation is that nearly half of the mortgages are granted in several installments, and about 80% of the monthly credit payments are actually the down payment of a new loan - in each such case, several mortgages are recorded.

According to the SadaNews translation, "In any case, it seems that the contractors' operations continue at a high pace, despite the restrictions imposed by the Bank of Israel in April of last year: the volume of 'bullet' and 'balloon' loans, as the Bank of Israel calls them, allocated for purchasing an apartment, reached about 1.48 billion shekels in May, one of the highest levels recorded since the beginning of the significant increase in the volume of these loans, around mid-2024. The percentage of these loans from the total new mortgages is about 15%, a proportion similar to that recorded in previous months."