Why I Sell Homes in Carmei Gat

By Hillel Krief

I got into real estate later than most people in this business, and not for the reasons you’d expect.

I spent years in tech as a data analyst and engineer. It was a good career, and I still do some on the side, but I grew up with a stutter, and for most of my life it quietly steered me away from anything built around talking. Once I got past it, years later, I realized I wanted to use my voice, not build a career around avoiding it.

I serve in miluim, and since Oct. 7 have fought in Lebanon and Gaza. Coming back from war is complicated for anyone who’s gone through it, and one of the harder things for me was how to find meaning after such an intensely meaningful experience. Helping people through one of the biggest purchases of their lives was the answer, especially when the process can be genuinely difficult to navigate. I’d been through it myself twice at a young age, thank God, so I knew how much it helps to have someone in your corner who isn’t just trying to close a deal.

I live in Carmei Gat and I’m raising my family here. When I tell a client that a building, a street or the city itself is right for them, I judge it by the same standard I’d use when thinking about my own kids’ future.

Carmei Gat started in 2014 and has grown to nearly 10,000 units. It’s young and still becoming itself, which means people moving here now have a chance to help shape what it becomes. When I first got here in 2022, there was one makolet in the entire city. Today there are three malls, one of them enormous, with a Rami Levy and a Supersol, plus the major health clinics of a much older city.

On an ordinary Shabbat morning, a hundred strollers line up outside the shul most of the Anglo community attends. Late Shabbat afternoon, the crowd moves to the park across from that original makolet, and it fills fast, kids tearing around while their parents sit and schmooze. It’s one of my favorite parts of the week: my kid running around with friends while I catch up with mine and my wife catches up with hers.

I used to serve as gabbai of that shul. One Simchat Torah, during Kol Hane’arim, the children came up to the bima and during singing “Hamalach Hagoel” I looked around, all I saw was children in every direction and I couldn’t see the end of them. I’m not one who cries easily. That got me anyway.

That’s the community I’m selling, and it’s also why I try not to oversell it, especially to younger buyers with less room for error and families moving here from another country entirely. Someone called me recently looking for a vibrant retirement community. I told them straight: Carmei Gat has the beginnings of one, but it isn’t there yet. At a similar budget, Ashkelon would probably serve them better right now. I’d rather lose a client than watch someone move somewhere that doesn’t fit.

Carmei Gat still has some growing to do. We don’t have a rabbi at our shul right now and the schools are operating but still developing. New minyanim have broken off and started in the past year alone.

Locally, there are plenty of cafes and some good burger spots. The pizza still needs work, and I’d know, since my wife and I run an Instagram page rating pizza across Israel.

Beit Shemesh, Ra’anana, Jerusalem or Tel Aviv, are wonderful places, and nothing replaces what they have to offer. But Carmei Gat comes at a price that doesn’t require you to compromise everything else just to afford a home. It’s 40 minutes by train to Tel Aviv, about an hour to Jerusalem by car/bus, where many people here work, and 25 minutes to the beach. There’s a real English-speaking community too: roughly 300 to 350 families out of about 10,000 households, most of them between 25 and 40. Established and active, just not the majority.

I spent a long time finding reasons not to use my voice. Now I get to use it for something that matters: telling people the truth about one of the biggest decisions they’ll make. I still think about that Simchat Torah morning, standing at the bima with children in every direction I looked, “Hamalach Hagoel” still going around me. That’s Carmei Gat to me. If it sounds like it could be yours too, I’d love to help you figure that out.