Missile damage across Israel has not disappeared during the current war, but the numbers show a very different scale and pattern of destruction compared with previous rounds of fighting. By the 11th day of the conflict, the Israel Tax Authority had recorded 9,115 compensation claims, including 6,586 involving damage to buildings. An updated figure released Wednesday pushed the total to 9,829 claims.

That number remains far below the destruction seen during last June’s 12-day war with Iran, when 53,409 damage claims were filed and the government ultimately paid about NIS 2.9 billion in compensation for direct property losses.

In the 11-day snapshot since the start of this war, Tel Aviv accounted for 4,609 claims, by far the heaviest concentration in the country. The Ashkelon office, which handles Beit Shemesh and Beersheba, had 3,664 claims, while Jerusalem had 181, Akko 494 and Tiberias 167. That concentration is landing in Israel’s most expensive urban corridor. Tel Aviv’s average dwelling price recently stood at about NIS 3.36 million, and 44.1% of all apartments in Israel are located in the Tel Aviv and central districts. In other words, the damage is lower than last summer, but it is falling disproportionately on the country’s priciest residential stock.

The physical nature of the damage is also different, and that changes the economics. Reports, citing security assessments and engineering analysis, say the current round has involved fewer missiles overall than last June, but a far greater use of cluster-style warheads. Separate Israeli assessments reported that around half of the ballistic missiles fired at Israel in this war carried cluster warheads. That kind of attack tends to spread smaller submunitions and shrapnel over a wider radius, which means more broken windows, facade damage, punctured interiors, damaged systems, scattered vehicle losses and multi-building impact zones, but fewer outright collapses and fewer towers that have to be razed and rebuilt from scratch.

That distinction is crucial for developers, landlords, municipalities and insurers. A demolition-and-rebuild event is slow, capital-intensive and transformative. A repair-heavy event is faster, but it strains a different part of the system: claims adjusters, municipal engineering teams, glass and facade contractors, short-term housing supply, and the ability to move residents out and back in quickly. Beersheba offers a sharp example. After one missile strike there, 1,083 people were forced from their homes, 198 apartments were declared uninhabitable, and two residential buildings housing roughly 500 residents were deemed unfit for habitation and expected to be demolished. That is not a nationwide reconstruction boom. It is a localized housing shock with immediate spillover into relocation, rent, and municipal response.

The market is also entering this round with more available inventory than it had a year ago. At the end of December, Israel had a record 86,090 unsold new homes, according to CBS data. CBS figures showed roughly 81,000 housing starts over the preceding 12 months, a 31.5% jump from the prior period. That does not mean damaged households can simply be slotted overnight into new stock. Much of that supply is still under construction, and handover timelines remain slow. But it does mean the system is operating with a deeper pipeline than during earlier wartime shocks, which should help prevent a broader seizure in the residential market if the current pattern of damage holds.

The Bank of Israel has left its benchmark rate at 4% in late February, noted that home prices had started rising again, and said rents in new and renewing contracts were up 3.8% year over year, while rents on turnover were up 6%. At the same time, the Bank and the commercial lenders rolled out a relief framework for households whose homes were damaged or who were evacuated, including mortgage deferrals of up to three months with no interest or fees and consumer-loan deferrals up to NIS 100,000. That support should soften the immediate financing shock for owners and tenants, but it does not remove the broader market risk, when damaged homes are concentrated in central Israel, temporary displacement can push straight into already expensive rental zones.

The bottom line from a property perspective is that Israel is not, for now, reliving last June’s scale of housing destruction. The damage bill is lower, the number of teardown cases appears smaller, and the repair profile is more diffuse. But the hits are clustering in the country’s most valuable housing belt, which means every damaged building carries outsized weight. If that pattern continues, this will be remembered less as a war that reset Israel’s residential map and more as one that stressed the repair economy, temporary housing market and compensation system in the places where housing is already hardest to replace.