Navigating Housing Demand Shifts: The Impact of War on the West Bank's Housing Market

This study discusses the impact of the ongoing war in the Gaza Strip on the housing demand of the West Bank and argues that encouraging the rental sector is an important strategy to reduce these impacts. The study analyses the institutional database and observes the changing demand for housing in the West Bank during the first half of 2024. It also interviews 30 decision-makers and investors to explore how the war influenced the market for both ownership and rental housing sectors. The study results sustain the failure of both ownership and rental sectors to contain the housing crises caused by poverty, shortage of supply, and increasing prices. The war created influential factors on housing demand, such as changing residential places and seeking low-cost housing. Such factors result from the renewed needs of householders in wartime based on decreasing safety requirements in some areas, decreasing many householders' income, and shortage of housing financing. The main finding of the study sustains that adapting the over-facilitation of homeownership as a primary housing policy in the West Bank for the last three decades, simultaneously with the exaggeration in protecting the tenants of residential properties, has caused the weakness of the housing sector in facing the sudden change in demand resulting from the war. The study further discusses a proposed guideline for maintaining the current rental sector to contain this crisis.