"At night you look out and see two lights -- it's a ghost town," Deco said.
"Most of these people have at least one more expensive home in the U.S., maybe two," said Ishai Levy, the Talbiye Residence project manager, who broke ground on the pink limestone apartment house one week before the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States. "This is like their place in the Hamptons."
Foreigners are snapping up luxury apartments in Jerusalem, many of which boast spectacular views of the Old City.
(Lefteris Pitarakis -- AP)
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Unlike most houses in the Hamptons, however, apartments in the Talbiye Residence come with air-conditioned, concrete-reinforced safe rooms built to withstand bomb blasts, missile attacks and chemical and biological agents.
For many wealthy European Jews, a strong Euro currency and, for French Jews, a rise in anti-Semitism have also increased the interest in Israeli luxury housing, which was decimated during the early years of the Palestinian uprising, or intifada. Prices plunged.
Last year, intrepid buyers looking for cheap deals ventured back into the market, real estate agents said. With the dramatic decline in suicide bombings that occurred at about the same time, the sudden spurt in demand for expensive places in the best neighborhoods collided with a shortage of available properties because of war-driven slowdowns in new construction.
As a result, sellers' prices now match runaway Washington real estate costs. Top-of-the-market apartments are selling for $560 a square foot or more -- equivalent to premium locations in Washington.
When businesswoman Ruth Max recently put her Jerusalem house on the market, the offering prices exceeded $700,000 for the 1,550-square-foot home she and her husband bought and renovated 20 years ago for $200,000.
But it wasn't the price tag that stunned Max. "Every single person who has come to see our house has been religious," she said, noting that her neighborhood is not overwhelmingly Orthodox.
"It was the first time in my involvement with real estate here that someone asked me, 'Where would I put the sukkah?' " said Max, a former Jerusalem resident who now lives in Amsterdam. "I thought he was out of his mind. I'd never dealt with stuff like this."
Across Israel, Orthodox and other observant Jews construct a small hut, a sukkah, in their gardens or on balconies or rooftops during the holiday of Sukkot, which commemorates the 40 years ancient Israelites spent roaming the deserts after their exodus from Egypt. Religious edict demands that no roof or balcony can overhang a kosher sukkah.
Orthodox Jews have become such important buyers of Jerusalem's most expensive properties that builders tailor new construction projects to their special demands.
Multilevel apartment buildings are equipped with "Sabbath elevators" that move continuously on the Jewish Sabbath, beginning at sundown on Friday, so that residents don't have to touch buttons in violation of religious restrictions on the operation of machinery. Kitchens are built with two sinks and include two dishwashers to accommodate kosher cooking requirements. Sinks are installed in the dining room for Sabbath meal hand-washing rituals. Balconies are positioned to allow for Sukkot huts.
In contrast, Tel Aviv real estate agents said their booming luxury market tends to attract secular Jews more interested in traditional vacation amenities, such as swimming pools and proximity to the beach.
"The buyers here are religious because Jerusalem has a strong spiritual flavor," said property consultant Davar. "There isn't another place in the world that is Jerusalem, but Tel Aviv could easily be in the south of Spain."
Researcher Hillary Claussen contributed to this report.
