'Ghost apartments' haunt Jerusalem

People living in Jerusalem have been aware of this phenomenon for quite a few years now. As the Jewish month of Tishrei approaches with its many holidays (Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot and Simhat Torah), the lights in many “ghost apartments” go on, and the voices (mainly in English) of the new neighbors — most of them rich Jews from Australia, North America or Europe — can be heard. They come to their vacation apartments in Jerusalem with their entire families to celebrate the holidays here. As soon as the holidays are over, they pack up and go back home, not to return until 11 months later, toward the end of the summer. Their apartments remain empty the rest of the year. In an interview with the real estate supplement of the Israeli economic newspaper The Marker, the mayor of Jerusalem estimated that there are as many as 11,000 such apartments throughout the city.

These apartments are mostly located in the ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods of Jerusalem, but also in quite a few high-end neighborhoods such as Yemin Moshe, Nahlaot and the Old City, where the wealthiest can be found. Ghost apartments reached record highs this year, after real estate developers set up a sales caravan in the Catskill Mountains of New York (where many ultra-Orthodox Jews spend the summer), for people interested in buying an apartment in Jerusalem.