As more young couples than ever crowd the town, can they find a roof to put over their heads?

T study by Realtor.com, which was released last month, listed Lakewood as the number one suburb in the country when it comes to rising home prices. According to the report, median home prices in Lakewood increased a whopping 47.6% to $309,000 from October 2019 to October 2020.

The housing boom is a “direct result of the pandemic,” Mrs. Blima Goldberger, a veteran realtor with Waxman Realty in Lakewood, told Mishpacha. “The market was definitely moving up before COVID, but ever since the pandemic arrived, it’s risen tremendously.”

A combination of rising prices, fewer newly married couples moving to Israel because of the pandemic, plus lower interest rates, means a housing crunch, and with it, a rental shortage — particularly of basements, particularly sought after by young couples.

To demonstrate, one just has to open a recent copy of the Masa U’Matan, a local publication considered the go-to for someone seeking a rental, and scan the pages, which in recent weeks has averaged just roughly two pages of listings. Just four years ago, any given issue would have over 17 pages of listings.

In the absence of accurate statistics, excess enrollment in Beth Medrash Govoha, the premier destination for newly married avreichim, is an indicator of the higher numbers. The yeshivah normally averages between 420 and 450 new bochurim per zeman, adding to the 750–800 single students already enrolled. But for this current zeman, which began after Succos, the yeshivah had hundreds more applications than they normally do. Even after Israeli authorities allowed foreign students to enter before the new zeman began, there was still a 25% increase over a regular intake, according to statistics provided by the yeshivah to Mishpacha.

Some of this increase includes the dozens of couples who got married in the last 11 months and would have moved to Israel but were unable to do so, because of COVID bureaucracy or the significant weakening of the dollar.

Moshe Silver, a Brooklyn resident who got married several months ago, told Mishpacha that he would have liked to begin his marriage in Israel but was unable to do so and instead settled in Lakewood.

“I learned in the Mir for two and a half years and did really well there,” he says, explaining why he was looking forward to moving back after he got married. “I love Eretz Yisrael and was really hoping to return. But with the country going into a lockdown and our having trouble obtaining the necessary permits, it was just not feasible for us,” he added.