A new State Comptroller’s report says Israel’s Government Housing Administration, a unit under the Accountant General’s Property, Procurement and Logistics division at the Finance Ministry, is not keeping effective track of the thousands of properties it manages. The unit is responsible for housing government ministries and support units, except the Defense Ministry.
The administration manages 6,607 buildings, including farms, public transport facilities and office buildings, totaling about 3.5 million square meters. About 1,220 of them are office buildings covering roughly 1.7 million square meters. Most are state-owned, or held through public-private PFI projects. At the end of 2024, the government’s centrally managed lease commitments reached about 7.5 billion shekels in real terms.
The report says the property map the administration uses today was prepared 25 years ago and is still kept in a physical archive rather than a computerized database. The map of government hospitals was completed only in 2020. The comptroller also found no up-to-date valuation of the assets, and said the state balance sheet reflects only part of the portfolio. It noted that, contrary to finance regulations requiring a valuation at least once a decade, no such appraisal has been done since 2013.
The audit also criticized the administration’s information systems. Until the launch of the “Ofek” system at the end of 2024, key allocation processes were handled by email. Even now, Ofek and the Sigma contract system are not integrated into a single end-to-end platform, making it hard to monitor delays, bottlenecks, occupancy rates and lease expirations. The ministry also lacks a full GIS system, and the existing systems cannot easily produce data without outside help.
The report says data is missing on issues such as earthquake resistance, with such information available for only about one-fifth of office buildings. It also says the ministry does not have a full picture of which buildings are protected against missile threats, which could affect emergency continuity planning during the ongoing war. On surplus assets, the comptroller found no long-term policy for retaining, leasing or selling properties no longer needed by the government. In 2024, 190 such properties were leased out, compared with 227 the year before, while sales were used mainly to cover the administration’s deficit. Fifty-seven properties worth more than 100 million shekels were left unrented for long periods, including nine vacant for over three years.
