Balfour residence overhaul pushed to 2027, forcing next prime minister to live elsewhere
The Prime Minister’s Office said the renovation of the official residence on Balfour Street in Jerusalem will only be completed during 2027. That means the prime minister elected after the next election will not be able to move into Balfour and will have to live in a temporary residence until the work is finished.
The project had previously been expected to end by the end of 2025, and in December 2025 Benjamin Netanyahu’s then-spokesman, Ziv Agmon, said it should be done within six months. Instead, the overhaul, carried out by the Defense Ministry, has been delayed again. Security forces and contractors are still active around the site, steel components are being brought in for reinforcement, and the street has remained closed to free civilian traffic for the past year, even though the prime minister does not live there.
Netanyahu left the Balfour residence in July 2021. After Naftali Bennett became prime minister, the house was stripped and left in disarray, and the renovation was frozen. Bennett was criticized for staying in his home in Ra’anana instead of advancing the work. When Yair Lapid later became prime minister, he lived in a rented apartment in the Balfour compound.
Work resumed in September 2023 but stopped again after the October 7 war, then restarted several months later. The renovation includes replacing the kitchen, plastering, painting, replacing rotten cabinets, improving plumbing and sewage, fixing electricity and air conditioning, strengthening the building against earthquakes, and upgrading communications and security systems, including digging in the yard. The cost was originally estimated at 50 million shekels, later dropped to 32 million during the change of government, and is now estimated to have risen back to about 50 million, meaning at least 15 million shekels more. In response, the Prime Minister’s Office said the project is a complex national undertaking led by the Defense Ministry, that the building is a protected historic structure in poor condition, and that it cannot disclose costs for national security reasons.
