The pitter-patter of big feet

Galit, a woman in her early thirties, had been looking for a place to rent in Tel Aviv for ages. A little apartment, something nice. Months passed and she figured she'd seen every available rental space in town. Then she spoke with a landlord in Bavli, and thought his description over the phone sounded terrific - a little place in North Tel Aviv. She thought it was an independent unit, on the roof.

In fact, what he was offering was a room that was an integral part of the family home. "The entrance to the room for rent was the main one of the apartment. There was no separate one," she relates. "You go into the apartment, and right there is a staircase that leads to the room on the roof. The room itself was very small. It did have a shower and toilet of its own, and a tiny kitchenette of about half a square meter had been installed." It did offer a modicum of privacy, but not much more than that.

Why on earth would an established couple want to bring a stranger into their home, sharing their refrigerator and various intimate parts of their lives? Galit also thought it astonishing, especially since there was no separate entrance to the rooftop room.
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"You walk through the main entrance into the apartment and see the living room. There is no real separation between the family's apartment and the rented room," she explains. At any given point she, or whoever rents the room, could freely come downstairs and roam about in the family's private space.

The would-be landlord explained that his son had lived in that room on top, and left the nest. He and his wife could, of course, have let the room be - or they could rent it out for NIS 2,500 a month, which is a nifty NIS 30,000 a year. To them it was a no-brainer.

The thing is, the phenomenon is becoming increasingly common. Actually, renting out a room in the family home had been fairly common back in the 1950s and '60s. Students and other young adults would often find themselves living with an alternative family, as it were. But those were perhaps more intimate times. Today the rationale is financial: Rental prices in central Israel, mainly the greater Tel Aviv area, are sky high. A whole apartment as such is often unaffordable to many renters, and as for the families, the magnitude of the potential extra income is a siren's song that they can't resist.

As for the tenants, who would want to live cheek to jowl with a strange family? Well, anybody who can't find an affordable place in the area in which they want to live, for example.

Amir Shaltiel, who runs and runs the Eldar Project Marketing agency, says that an old rule-of-thumb has been broken. "In the past the boundary was clear: Landlords didn't rent a part of the apartment that could only be reached through the family space, because that lowered their standard of living," he explains. "But that line has become blurred as rental prices rise. It has become perfectly legitimate to rent a room on the roof that you can only reach through the family home."

Galit kept searching and found another place, where a woman had split her already-not large apartment into two units. The one for rent was all of 30 square meters in size, and the landlady seemed to be prepared to settle for a smaller space herself - plus NIS 33,000 a year.

Dream come true?

Elderly couples whose children have moved out, and who are living in a spacious apartment but are dependent on social security, can obviously use the passive income of rent - but the interesting thing is that the phenomenon is occurring across a broader spectrum. Sometimes young couples buy a large apartment and rent out a room or two, to help pay their mortgage. If they think of it in advance, their apartment can be designed to accommodate a tenant, somehow creating at least the illusion of privacy using plaster walls, internal doors or screens, and so on, says Shaltiel. Until the young couple has children, they don't need all the space and can often use the income.

Also, Israelis like to own their own property but because of real estate prices, they often can't really afford to. This is one way to make the dream come true. Anyway, youngsters are used to sharing apartments: it's even fun for them. The invasion of their privacy tends to be less of an issue than for an elderly couple not accustomed to trance music wailing through the ceiling.

Builders are accommodating the trend. Yohanan Haas, chief executive of Realty Executives, says that in Kfar Yona for example some 15% of the homes are being created with a discrete unit that can be rented out. "I guess that 10% to 12% of the families in the Sharon rent out their basements," he guesses.

Old Tel Aviv apartments were planned wastefully, points out Haim Kaufman of Kaufman Properties. They tend to have old-fashioned, closed-off "service porches," spacious hallways, separate kitchens - whereas today the fashion is for the kitchen and living room to be one continuous, open unit. Redesigning the interior can gain the owner a lot of space, some of which can be rented out. And the rental income can be used to pay for the renovation, too.

But take note: It isn't always legal to just up and split your apartment. In Tel Aviv there are whole streets where it's against the law. Before you hire an architect or take a hacksaw to your ancient kitchen table, check the local bylaws first.

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