The Hidden Billions of Rental Churn

Rental housing debates focus on rent levels and supply—but there's a third cost hiding in plain sight. Every time a tenant is forced to move, they burn thousands in truck rentals, agent fees, painting, cleaning, and dozens of hours of lost time. Multiply that across millions of households moving every two to three years, and the number is staggering: eight to ten billion shekels a year in Israel alone, with zero productive output. This episode builds the first public cost model of rental churn—the deadweight loss that no rent control or zoning reform addresses—and asks why this enormous line item is completely absent from the housing policy conversation.