JERUSALEM – Oligarcas, let the tender begin.
After formally moving from its Tel Aviv embassy to Jerusalem, the United States now sells the coastal property that has been home to its ambassadors in Israel since 1962, an elegant five-bedroom house on a cliff overlooking the Mediterranean just north of Tel Aviv. .
The sale price? Around $ 87 million, which would be a national record for a residential sale, according to The Globes newspaper, which first reported the list.
But it’s a fair price, real estate agents said, given its location on what is considered Israel’s most prestigious street, Galei Tchelet, or “Azure Waves,” a row of ambassadors and billionaires, where the sunset views of the Mediterranean are completely unimpeded.
It is also an exceptionally large street property, 1.2 acres, and is subject to zoning restrictions that have since prevented owners from assembling such large lots, according to Eytan Blumberg, an Anglo-Saxon real estate broker.
The existing residential record was set this year when Roman Abramovich, the Israeli-Russian billionaire owner of soccer club Chelsea, paid $ 65.5 million for a nearby sprawling complex, but it was just a few blocks from the sea, Blumberg said.
Other residents at Galei Tchelet include Indian and Chinese envoys, as well as Boris Kuzinez, a Moscow-based developer, and Teddy Sagi, the Israeli founder of the gaming software company Playtech.
More Malibu than the Middle East in its architecture, the ambassador’s residence “Mad Men”, scene of many great July 4th parties, has been renovated and improved over the years, with recent additions including a xeriscape garden in the front yard. and a pool and Jacuzzi terrace at the rear.
Daniel B. Shapiro, who lived in the house as an ambassador for the Obama administration, said the house was built on land given to the United States by the Israeli government as compensation for Washington’s food aid in the 1950s, when Israel was still a poor nascent country.
“No one lived there then,” said Shapiro. “It was just a rocky cliff. It wasn’t worth anything yet.
Its first occupant was Walworth Barbour, who was appointed by President John F. Kennedy and served a dozen years as Ambassador. He left little of an obvious mark on Israel, though his name graces the nearby American International School.
The current occupant is Ambassador David M. Friedman, who has recorded his influence in the country in countless ways as a driving force behind the Trump administration’s radically altered policy toward the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
Recently he has been concerned with seeing through a very different type of real estate deal: the Israeli annexation of occupied territory in the West Bank.
In 2018, Mr. Friedman orchestrated the closure of the American Consulate in Jerusalem, merging it into his portfolio and in command of the Consul General’s 19th-century stately residence.
That residence made the house in the Herzliya Pituach neighborhood, just north of Tel Aviv, superfluous. The Herzliya residence was a 10-mile drive from the old embassy in Tel Aviv, but about 50 miles from the new embassy in Jerusalem.
“We expect the sale to advance in the coming months,” the embassy said in a statement. A spokeswoman declined to answer questions.
But Shapiro said the much smaller house in Jerusalem does not meet current United States Department of State standards for ambassadorial residences. “I don’t think it is a long-term solution,” he said. “I imagine they will build a new one. But that will take time and money.
