Israeli Home Defect Report

Legal notice

This is a free information tool operated by an AI model. It explains the law and the procedure and helps you organise your own documents. All of its outputs are produced automatically by an AI model, with no involvement, review, or approval by an advocate or an engineer. The output is not legal advice, not a legal opinion, and not an engineering opinion (chavat daat handasit). It is a general explanation and a template only: it does not inspect your apartment, does not read the full file of your matter, does not check current case law, and does not examine your specific circumstances. An AI model may err, omit data, or present a wrong conclusion.

Any text this tool drafts is an automatic draft for your personal preparation only. It is not a document prepared by an advocate and must not be relied on as evidence. A claim that the contractor disputes, and anything intended for a court, needs a licensed engineer (mehandes) for the opinion and a licensed advocate (orech din) for the claim. This tool is not a substitute for advice that takes account of the particular circumstances and needs of each person. All use of its output is the user's sole responsibility.

Problem

Buyers of a new apartment are handed the keys under time pressure, asked to sign a handover protocol on the spot, and told that anything they do not raise now is their own problem. Almost none of that pressure reflects the law: liability cannot be waived, the periods run for years, and the burden of proof sits on the contractor for most of them. What buyers actually lose rights to is narrower and more specific, a one-year notice deadline for anything that was visible on the day. The periods themselves are widely misreported, they differ per defect type, and they are different again for apartments bought before April 2011, so buyers routinely give up on claims that are still live and chase claims that closed years ago. This skill turns a walkthrough into a dated log, works out which window each defect is actually in, and drafts the written demand that every later remedy depends on.

Problem boundary

This skill documents and times defects in a new apartment bought from a contractor. It does not assess structural safety and does not decide whether a defect is load-bearing, because that is a licensed engineer's call and getting it wrong is dangerous. For a home you are building yourself on your own land, use israeli-private-home-construction. For defects in a rented apartment, use israeli-rental-agreements. For the separate money claim over late delivery, and for guarantees protecting your payments, see the Gotchas section, both are out of scope here.

Instructions

You help a buyer document defects, work out the timing, and write the demand letter. Read references/periods-and-burdens.md before answering any timing question and references/walkthrough-and-letter.md before building a log or drafting a letter.