Ghost apartments are apartments that are not inhabited and the purpose of doubling property taxes is to encourage apartment owners to occupy them • In the State Comptroller's report, published today, a section was devoted to the issue of ghost apartments, the treatment of their occupancy, by doubling property taxes and monitoring the progress of the issue in the municipalities.

In 2015, the municipality of Haifa submitted a request, following requests from the past, to the Ministry of Finance and the Interior to add the classification "unused residential building" to the property tax for 2016. The procedure bore fruit, and in December 2015 the Ministers of the Interior and Finance signed an exceptional approval for the imposition of property tax for 2016, which authorized the municipality to add the said classification and double the amount of property tax for apartments classified in this classification.
Accordingly, in the property tax order of the Municipality of Haifa for 2016, it was determined that an unused residential building that was not permanently occupied by anyone in nine of the 12 months prior to December 2015, will be charged a property tax rate according to the type of residential building and according to the area in which it is located at a rate of NIS 71.21 to 207.46. 35.61 per square meter, compared to residential property tax at a rate of 103.73 to XNUMX NIS per square meter.
For the purpose of determining the apartments that will be charged double property taxes, the Haifa municipality set a benchmark of zero water consumption for nine of the 12 months of the year (similar to the benchmark set by the Tel Aviv municipality), and received the data from its water corporation.
The municipality of Haifa sent billing notices doubling property tax for 2016, in accordance with the water consumption estimated in 2015. From the municipality's data, it emerged that the number of apartments where water consumption was measured to be zero and to which billing notices were sent amounted to 1,552.

Appeals on charges
The appeals were discussed at the meetings of the discount committee, which the city council authorized to approve periods that will not be included in the nine-month total, as mentioned in the definition of "a residential building that is not in use", in circumstances beyond the owner's control, including a personal or financial situation. The committee exempted residents whose medical condition did not allow them to live in an apartment, apartment owners who moved to live in a nursing home or died, apartments whose heirs are in conflict, apartments in receivership and apartments that needed a thorough renovation, from double property tax. In the end, 1,175 of the 1,552 billing notices sent to the residents remained valid, and the payment for them amounted to approximately NIS 9 million.

Summary
In 2014, a temporary order was issued that allowed local authorities to collect double property tax from apartments that are not in use (that are not occupied) in 2015 and 2016. The purpose of this provision was to encourage the occupancy of those apartments and thus expand the housing supply. An inspection by the State Comptroller's Office on this issue revealed that the commitment of the state and local authorities concerned regarding the application of the temporary order was little. Only the three largest municipalities - Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Haifa - applied the curfew. The rest preferred not to do so.
The Ministries of the Interior and Finance, which were entrusted with its installation, did not work vigorously to approve its application in the first of the two possible years in the cities of Jerusalem and Haifa, even though these municipalities contacted the Ministries of the Interior and Finance on the dates specified in the law. These ministries also did not carry out any testing and learning of lessons regarding the manner of implementation and the degree of effectiveness of the temporary order, as they should have done, and in general they did not give their opinion on the fact that only a few municipalities applied it. If they had done this, it would have been possible to apply the conclusions of the inspection and its lessons within the framework of the new time order.
At the end of the inspection, a new time order had not yet been installed. If and when it is installed, the Ministries of Finance and the Interior must examine its effectiveness and usefulness, as they have already stated in the past that they will do, and act to remove barriers that make it difficult for the local authorities to implement it.

Last week, the municipality reported to its council that 135 unoccupied municipal properties were found. For each such property, the Ministry of the Interior must reduce the aid to that municipality by the amount of property tax that could have been collected for the property. Multiplication is also possible.
It is best to give up the property in favor of the municipality.