The Housing Helper: How US Oleh Hillel Davis is Building Trusted House from the Ground Up

Hillel Davis shares how a simple Google form to help fellow Olim find apartments grew into a full-service real estate business in Israel.

Trusted House

Who are you and what’s your business?

Hi, my name is Hillel Davis. I’m originally from Cleveland, Ohio, and now live in beautiful, sunny Netanya, Israel. I’m a partner and co-founder at Trusted House, where we help people with all aspects of their home—whether they’re Israeli or Olim. Our goal is to simplify every process related to living in Israel, from buying or renting a home to managing an investment property or handling maintenance, renovations, and billing. We strive to streamline the many complex aspects of residential real estate and home management.

While our services are available to everyone, the majority of our clients—over half—are Olim, primarily from English-speaking countries but also from South America and Europe. People moving from abroad especially appreciate our level of service, as they’re often unfamiliar with Israeli processes and nuances. Beyond language and cultural differences, navigating the Israeli mentality and bureaucracy can be challenging. We aim to break everything down into clear, manageable steps, making the transition as easy as possible.

What inspired you to make Aliyah, and did you always know you wanted to start a business in Israel?

I grew up in a deeply Zionistic home and community, constantly surrounded by the idea of Aliyah. Whether through B’nai Akiva, where many of my camp counselors had made Aliyah, or in school, where teachers moved to Israel each year, Aliyah was always part of my world. When I was 16, one of my brothers made Aliyah and joined the army, further reinforcing my belief that I would also move to Israel one day—it was just a matter of when.

Initially, I assumed I would build a career in the U.S., start a family, and eventually make Aliyah when I was financially established. However, as English-language university programs in Israel expanded, the possibility of moving earlier became more realistic. While studying in Yeshiva for a year, I explored these options and ultimately chose to study at Bar-Ilan University. I first arrived on a student visa but officially made Aliyah midway through my first year.

Starting a business wasn’t on my radar at first. At 19, I had a lot to learn. But things naturally fell into place when I struggled to find an apartment before my first year in Israel. I was younger than most other renters, and searching remotely made it even harder. Fortunately, some kind people helped me secure a great place.

The following year, as more Olim moved to my community in Givat Shmuel, I noticed the chaos—many people were looking for apartments or roommates, but there was no system in place to connect them. So I created a simple Google Form, acting as a “roommate matchmaker” as a hobby between classes.

Very quickly, I built a long list of people searching for apartments, yet very few were listing available units. To address this, I designed a flyer, printed thousands of copies, and hired people to distribute them in mailboxes. The response was immediate—landlords started calling me to rent out their apartments.

At first, I wasn’t trying to make money from this. I didn’t have a real estate license and wasn’t pretending to be a realtor—I was just helping friends. But I soon realized the potential. I enjoyed it—helping people, seeing apartments—so I got my real estate license, registered for taxes, and formalized the business. I joined a real estate agency and worked there for several years, first as a student and then part-time while serving in the army after finishing my degree.

Initially, I focused on rentals for Olim, as that was my niche. Over time, I learned about the buying process, improved my Hebrew, and started working with Israeli clients. The influx of French Olim also introduced me to a new demographic. My experience broadened until I felt I had learned everything I could from working with an agency.

While pursuing my MBA and developing my business skills, I decided to start my own company. Shortly after, I met someone with a similar vision—an experienced entrepreneur in real estate. Our conversations evolved from discussing properties to analyzing industry challenges and brainstorming ways to improve the real estate experience in Israel. We clicked immediately.

After several months, we decided to work together. Within a year, I closed my own business and joined his. When I completed my military service, I officially became an employee and co-founder of Trusted House. Since 2018, we’ve had the privilege of helping hundreds of clients. We continue to grow, improving and expanding our services to achieve our original goal: transforming the Israeli real estate experience.

What were the biggest cultural or logistical challenges you faced as an Oleh starting a business in Israel?

The biggest initial challenge was the language barrier. While my conversational Hebrew improved quickly, it took much longer to grasp the nuances and speak with full confidence. On a small scale, this meant struggling to describe maintenance issues to electricians, plumbers, or AC technicians—often relying on Google Translate and videos, which slowed down problem-solving.

On a larger scale, it meant negotiating multi-million shekel deals and ensuring I could effectively advocate for my clients in Hebrew. It took years to build the confidence and technical vocabulary needed to handle negotiations on an equal footing.

There were also countless bureaucratic hurdles, especially in real estate—dealing with permits, legal changes, taxes, and construction regulations. While frustrating, these challenges became an advantage. Most of our clients, whether they currently live in Israel or are purchasing from abroad, struggle with Israeli bureaucracy. My experience navigating these complexities, along with the connections I’ve built, allows us to provide significant added value.

Did your background or previous experience help you, or did you have to reinvent yourself in a new industry?

My father actually works in property management in the States. Growing up, I'd spend a couple of weeks every summer as a teenager working for him, doing maintenance, cleaning, landscaping—whatever was helpful that particular summer. The summer right before I made Aliyah, when I was 19, the manager for one of the big complexes that his company was managing (about 150-180 apartments) quit the day before I got back from Israel. He didn't have any backups lined up, so he asked if I could take over until they'd hired a new manager. I happily agreed.

For about two weeks I was showing all the empty apartments to potential renters and setting schedules for the maintenance and cleaning people. I was really thrown into the deep end. Obviously I had some support, but I was really the man on the ground there. Eventually they hired a full-time manager, and I helped train them based on my two or three weeks of experience. Those weeks taught me a lot about how to show people apartments, how to listen to what people are looking for, and how to tailor-make the experience for what they're looking for.

When I was starting my business here, it was obviously a very different scale, a very different clientele, and a completely different type of housing situation—a building being managed by a company as opposed to most of the apartments in Israel, which are individually owned as condos. But that experience gave me some confidence to put myself out there, walk around one-on-one with people, and show them the most important thing: the place where they're going to live. When starting my business, I was able to learn how to apply those basic principles to the Israeli market and to the type of people I was going to be working with.

How did you get your first customers or clients? Was there a moment when you realized, 'This is really working'?

When we were first starting Trusted House, our approach wasn't to just run to market, try to find properties to sell, market them, and use that to flip more clients the way that a typical real estate agency works. Our goal was to make sure that we were going to be able to offer true value to our clients. That meant sitting down and understanding the different processes and challenges that people face, whether they're trying to buy, rent, build, renovate, or whatever they're doing. We wanted to see where there was space for us to offer value and build a team and brand around that.

There were a lot of costs and time spent on building the business. Because we were working from a place where we genuinely wanted to offer real value, we didn't want to rush into the deep end before we were confident that the value we were going to offer would be worthwhile for our clients. As a result, we invested for several months before we even started taking on any clients, just as a proof of concept.

After each client we worked with in that proof of concept stage, we'd stop and analyze to see what kind of lessons we could learn before moving on to the next project. We had several different projects going on at once—different types of deals we working on - a purchase, a sale, a renovation, a Tama 38—really trying to learn from every situation we were in without going too quickly. As a result, it took quite some time before we felt confident enough to expand the business and hit the ground running.

How is your business doing?

Thank God, now we're in a place where the deal flow is almost entirely from word-of-mouth. When we do a good enough job with one client, they're more than happy to bring more clients. Building that network is extremely important. Having an inherent network to start off with is crucial in any business, but certainly in real estate, where your reputation and name are your most valuable assets. Starting off with a level of trust from your immediate circles is critical.

Being able to build that circle of trust based on the experiences your clients have had makes such a big difference. Every tag you get in a Facebook group, every referral from someone else—whether they're in the industry or just a friend or family member of someone else who may be looking to receive your services—makes a huge difference. First, being able to start off from a place of trust. Second, why spend money on advertising when you can spend your time making a good impression on each and every client?

What's next for your business, and what's your long-term vision for it?

As for what's next for our business, I think that any business today has to have some kind of AI strategy. It's undisputable that no matter what industry you're in, AI is going to make some kind of impact or disruption. Getting ahead of the game and thinking strategically about how to utilize the opportunities and tools that are available, and integrating them into the services and processes you've already built, is crucial. Hopefully everyone will see soon enough how we're going about that.

I've always avoided defining ourselves as being a startup because we're not a startup per se in the way that most of them are financially structured. We're not a tech company, but rather a service company that utilizes a lot of technological tools and adapts them to our needs so that we can provide the best service possible in a more efficient way.

Nonetheless, being a small, young company working in the Mercaz where many other companies surround us in the various places we've had our offices (today we work in the Bursa), being surrounded by that kind of energy has inspired us to think differently, act differently, and adapt to changes in technology and markets. Whether it's been over the course of Covid or the course of the war, we've been able to change the way we work and approach different situations more similar to the way a startup in Israel would, as opposed to a big, old, traditional real estate company.

What advice would you give an Oleh/Olah thinking about starting a business here?

Firstly, kol hakavod for putting yourself out there because it's not easy. The fact that you're willing to take those steps is great and admirable. I think the most important thing is making sure that you really have added value that you're going to be contributing. There are a lot of small businesses out there that you may or may not have heard of. Do the research to see who your potential competitors are and where there is room for additional businesses, services, or technologies. Whatever it is that you're building needs to be appreciated, recognized, and able to stand out.

Secondly, utilize a network. If you have a built-in network—a strong group of friends, people that you did Ulpan with, people that you did the Army with—start with that. Start with something small and then build off of that network. If you don't have an inherently built-in network, then find a network. There are networking groups, Facebook groups, and all kinds of social groups based on various communities and cities. Try to find people who you can build a relationship with, who are going to support you, recommend you, and make introductions that will be valuable so that your business can thrive.

At the end of the day, while technology is great, business happens between people. You need someone to be on the other side of that deal. If you can make a connection that's going to find someone on the other side of that deal, the other side of that fundraising, or that next hire, then you're going to be that much further ahead and in a position to succeed.

To learn more about Trusted House, please visit Trusted House

Built by Olim