The Price of Convenience: Is it Worth Paying 2,000 Shekels More a Month to Save 20 Minutes on the Road?

It happens in almost every apartment search. You expand the radius on the map a little, and suddenly a larger, newer, or simply significantly cheaper apartment appears. It is not that far away — another 20 minutes from work. On the screen, it looks like a small concession. After a few months of commuting, it can feel different. The more distant apartment almost always looks good in an Excel table: the rent is lower, and calculated over a few years, the gap can reach tens or even hundreds of thousands of shekels.

But distance has its own account. It appears at the gas station, in the number of kilometers added to the vehicle, in wear and tear, and in some cases, in the need for a second car. And it has a price that is harder to put into Excel: the time spent on the road. So how much are 20 minutes really worth, and at what point does the savings on rent stop being savings?

The gaps in rental prices in Israel are large enough to make this question relevant. According to CBS data for the first quarter of 2026, the average rent in Tel Aviv was about 7,351 shekels per month, compared to 5,826 shekels in Ramat Gan, 5,184 shekels in Rishon LeZion, and 5,051 shekels in Petah Tikva. These data do not mean that the exact same apartment will be thousands of shekels cheaper if you move 20 minutes away: the average rent is influenced, among other things, by the size of the apartments and the composition of the rented apartments in each city. But they illustrate the price gaps between relatively nearby areas.

20 minutes turn into 15 hours a month

Let's take as an example a family that found an apartment for 5,500 shekels instead of an apartment similar in its needs for 7,500 shekels. The difference: from the cheaper apartment, the commute to work is about 20 minutes longer each way. If one of the spouses arrives at work five days a week, it is an extra 40 minutes a day. In a month of 22 working days, this is almost 15 additional hours on the road. In a year, it is about 176 hours — more than four full 40-hour work weeks. If both spouses commute daily and the move adds similar time to both, the family is already paying almost 30 hours a month to save those 2,000 shekels.

You can also reverse the equation. In the case of one worker, before we even calculated gas, the savings are about 136 shekels for every additional hour they spend on the road. In the case of two spouses, each of whom adds 20 minutes each way, the return drops to about 68 shekels per additional hour of travel. This is not necessarily a bad deal. A person willing to add 40 minutes a day in exchange for 24,000 shekels a year may decide that the deal is excellent. But now it is clearer what they are buying and what they are selling.

Car expenses and logistics

Here, too, there is no fixed connection between 20 minutes of driving and the number of kilometers. Twenty minutes within Gush Dan during rush hour are not the same as twenty minutes on a highway, so the cost of gas must be calculated according to the distance actually added. Let's take for illustration an addition of 10 km each way, meaning 20 km a day. In 22 working days, this is another 440 km a month. A car that does 12 km per liter will consume about 37 liters of gasoline per month for the additional trips. At a price of 8.09 shekels per liter in August, this is about 300 shekels a month just for the extra gas. To this cost, one must also add the wear and tear resulting from the additional mileage — maintenance, tires, and depreciation.

But the really big difference is between a household that already owns a car and the move only adds kilometers to it, and a family that the new distance forces to own a second car. In the second case, fixed expenses such as insurance, licensing, maintenance, and depreciation also enter the calculation, and the savings of 2,000 shekels in rent can quickly shrink.

Hybrid work and family factors

Hybrid work changes the calculation. An employee who comes to the office three times a week adds in our case about 8-9 hours of travel per month, and not almost 15. The number of kilometers and fuel expenses also decrease accordingly. In such a case, it is much easier to justify moving to a more distant and cheaper apartment.

For a single person working in an office, moving to a more distant apartment is mainly a calculation of time versus money. In a family with children, the calculation changes. The workday does not end just when the employee finishes working, but needs to connect to the closing time of the kindergarten, school, or after-school program. An addition of 20 minutes to the trip can turn a small traffic jam from an inconvenience into a problem: who picks up the child if there is a delay, who arrives when they call from school in the middle of the day, and what to do when both parents have working hours that do not align with the frameworks. In such cases, the financial cost may also rise.

Bottom line: the convenience premium

The right way to make a decision is not to ask only "how much does the apartment cost?", but to place two alternatives against each other. In the nearby apartment: higher rent, shorter trips, and fewer transport expenses. In the distant apartment: savings on rent, from which one must subtract the additional gas and transport and check if a need for an additional car is created.

A family that pays 2,000 shekels more a month to live closer spends 24,000 shekels a year on what can be called a convenience premium. Sometimes this is an expense that is hard to justify. Sometimes, after counting the car and the hundreds of hours saved, it turns out that it is not so expensive.