Your Rights After Handover - Bedek and Warranty Periods in Israel
When you receive a new apartment in Israel, two separate clocks start running - and when the first one ends, the burden of proof flips from the contractor to you. Most buyers find this out too late.
Request a quote →Two periods, not one
Israel's Sale (Apartments) Law gives the buyer of a new apartment two consecutive protection periods. They are not the same thing, and the difference decides who pays.
| Bedek period (tkufat bedek) | Warranty period (tkufat achrayut) | |
|---|---|---|
| Starts | The day the apartment is handed over to you | When the bedek period for that component ends |
| Length | Varies by component - plumbing, moisture and tiling, for example, carry bedek periods of one to five years, and some components carry longer ones. The full schedule, component by component, is set out in the Sale Law regulations. | Three years, for each component |
| Who has to prove what | The contractor. If a defect appears, it is on him to show that you caused it. If he cannot, he repairs it. | You. You have to show the defect comes from faulty design, poor workmanship or defective materials - not from ordinary use or maintenance. |
This is why the bedek period matters. During it, a documented defect is the contractor's problem to disprove. Once the warranty period begins, the same defect becomes yours to prove. Nothing about the defect changed - only who carries the burden. It is a long window, and any point inside it works; what you do not want is to let it pass unused.
When should the inspection happen?
For a new apartment there are three realistic windows. Each has advantages and drawbacks, and all three keep the contractor's duty to repair fully intact.
| Timing | In its favor | Against it |
|---|---|---|
| Before handover (at the initial protocol) | Defects get repaired before you move in. No repair work going on around you while you live there. | Some items may not be installed yet and cannot be checked. Not every contractor allows it. |
| At handover, or right after | The apartment is complete, so the inspection is complete. No permission from the contractor is needed to enter, and the schedule is yours. The burden of proof sits with the contractor. | Repairs happen while you are already living there. |
| Months after handover | Still inside the bedek period, so repairs can still be demanded and the burden of proof is still the contractor's. | Repairs while living there - and furniture now blocks parts of the apartment from being inspected. |
One practical note. If you inspect after handover, sooner is more convenient than later - not because the duty to repair weakens, it does not, but because a long gap gives a contractor room to argue that damage came after you took the keys: the move, the air conditioners, the cabinets, the shower enclosure. A few days or weeks after handover is normal and carries none of that.
⚠️ Important - please read before the next section
Nothing on this page is legal advice, or advice of any other kind. This page was written by Inspect - an engineering inspection firm, not a law firm - and does not address any reader's case. What follows is general information about how the law and the courts in Israel have approached defects at handover, drawn from the statute and from published judgments we have read in the original. It is not an opinion on your property, your contract or your situation, and it cannot be used as guidance for any specific case.
The decision to accept or refuse an apartment has serious legal and financial consequences, and every case turns on its own facts - the contract, the defects, the timing, the contractor. Before taking that decision, consult a lawyer who specializes in construction defects (likuyei bniya) and obtain a professional engineering opinion on the property itself. Do not rely on this page, or on any general source, in place of that advice.
Inspect provides engineering inspections. It does not provide legal advice, and accepts no responsibility for decisions taken on the basis of this page without tailored professional advice.
Defects at handover: refusing to accept the apartment
You arrive at the handover, and the apartment has problems. Take the keys, or refuse them? Refusal is a lawful step - but the published case law shows that buyers who refused without solid grounds, or who accepted and then did not let the contractor repair, came out behind. We reviewed the actual judgments (they are cited, with case numbers, on the Hebrew version of this analysis); this is what they hold.
The dividing line the courts drew is not "how many defects". In a 2012 Tel Aviv case, a buyer refused an apartment over waterproofing, paint, tiling and aluminum defects - even a neighbor's sewage pipe routed through her kitchen. The court rejected the refusal, holding that defects "are not counted numerically" to decide severity, and that reduced comfort alone does not make an apartment unfit to live in. She ended up bearing the interest on the unpaid balance for the entire refusal period.
Where refusal did succeed, the apartment could not lawfully be occupied at all. In a 2025 Tel Aviv case, a buyer refused the keys because the building had no Form 4 (the occupancy approval under the Planning and Building Law); the court held that a buyer is not required to have "the skills to examine whether the construction matches the permit" - that is the approving authority's job - and awarded her 385,060 NIS in statutory delay compensation, paid by the developer.
And accepting the keys waives nothing. The Sale (Apartments) Law obliges the contractor to repair any non-conformity reported during the bedek period, and section 7A of the Law makes a waiver of these rights, demanded as a condition of handover, void - even if signed. What the law asks of the buyer in return, under section 4B, is a proper opportunity for the contractor to repair: Israel's Supreme Court held in August 2026 that buyers who sued without giving that opportunity keep their compensation - but measured at the contractor's own repair cost, roughly 20% below market price in that case, and courts have cut compensation by a third and by half on the same ground.
Which way does each situation point?
🚫 Where refusal has been upheld
No Form 4 / occupancy approval · no permanent connection to electricity, water or sewage (the Supreme Court has held that delivering apartments before these connections, before the entrance was even cast, breaches the delivery terms) · severe active moisture, widening cracks · a genuine safety hazard.
The common thread: the apartment could not lawfully or safely be lived in as it stood. Whether that applies to a given contract is a question for a lawyer, before the handover.
✅ Where refusal has been rejected
Finish defects, deviations from the technical specification, tiling and plaster problems, localized moisture - even a long list of them. Repairable defects were not accepted as grounds to refuse; the contractor has to repair them either way, through the section 4B route.
What most buyers do: take the keys, document everything in an engineering opinion, deliver it to the contractor in writing, and manage the repair demand from there.
What the losing side actually paid, in the cases we read. The buyer who refused without grounds bore the interest on her unpaid balance for the whole refusal period - a component claimed at about 78,000 NIS - and the court noted she would have been "significantly better off financially" accepting on time. Buyers who accepted but denied the contractor a proper chance to repair had their compensation cut by half in one case, and measured down to the contractor's own cost by the Supreme Court in another. And even the buyer whose refusal was justified waited three and a half years, and a second lawsuit, without the apartment. Refusal - justified or not - is the expensive road.
What an engineering opinion gives you here
In every one of these situations the same thing shapes the outcome: how well the defects are documented. Any written notice to the contractor counts; an engineering opinion is the most orderly form of it, and the hardest to argue with.
- Each defect tied to its source wherever one applies - the Israeli Standard, the regulation, or the clause of the technical specification it deviates from
- A repair cost estimate - based on the Dekel price book, the standard construction pricing reference in Israel
- An expert's declaration - what allows the opinion to be filed as expert evidence under the Evidence Ordinance
- Accompaniment through to completion - we stay with you from the report until the repairs are finished, and where a dispute develops we refer you to a lawyer who specializes in construction defects
⚠️ Reminder: the section above is general information only, not legal advice. Every case must be examined on its own facts with a lawyer who specializes in construction defects.
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