Tel Aviv court rejects couple’s claim they sold apartment under mafia-style pressure
A Tel Aviv District Court judge has rejected a couple’s attempt to reclaim an apartment in Or Yehuda, ruling that they failed to prove the 2005 sale was only a sham used as collateral for a loan. Judge Einat Rabid found that the contract was not shown to be fictitious and ordered the couple to keep the property registered in the buyer’s name.
The dispute centered on an apartment the couple bought in 1985. In June 2005 they signed an agreement to sell it for $95,000, while remaining in the home as tenants. The property was later registered in the daughter’s name in 2009. The couple sued the daughter and her father only in April 2021, after waiting 16 years, claiming the father, whom they described as a well-known figure in the gray market, had threatened them and that the sale was merely security for a loan of NIS 437,000.
They argued that the rent they paid over the years exceeded the loan amount, so the debt had effectively been repaid and they should be restored as owners. The daughter said the transaction was a legitimate sale for full consideration, and that the land registry entry was proper. She and her father also rejected the claim that rent payments were loan repayments.
Rabid wrote that the attempt to portray the father as a criminal underworld figure did not fit the plaintiff’s own testimony describing him as a family friend. She also said the rent theory was inconsistent with the existence of a written lease and with the fact that the couple paid rent for many years. The judgment noted that when the daughter later sued them over unpaid rent, they never alleged that the deal was fictitious or that the payments were loan repayments. The court also pointed to a contradiction between the NIS 3,000 monthly amount the couple claimed they paid and the lease terms of $500 a month, about NIS 2,000 at the time, later rising to no more than NIS 2,500. The suit was dismissed, and the couple were ordered to pay NIS 100,000 in legal costs and attorney fees.
