Dream Home in Belgium

To buy your dream house in Belgium is not a quick thing, thanks to the nature of market and administrative process, let’s have a look at the typical steps:

Step 1: Searching

This step is actually often the most time consuming part, as told to us once by an agency, it’s often difficult to find THE house which checks all your “dream house” boxes. In the end, compromise might need to be made, but on which criteria? Should it be location? Or maybe size of the house?

Well, we’ve come up with one simple rule:

Important criteria that are not possible to change, don’t compromise!

For example:

• Location -> Not possible to change, so if it’s important for you to have a shorter commute to work, don’t compromise!
• Orientation -> Not possible to change, so if it’s important for you to enjoy the morning sun, don’t compromise!
• Interior -> Possible to change, so even if it’s dated, you’ll still have the chance to upgrade later, could be a great opportunity to get the style you want!

Ok, now this may help you (and your partner) to decide which house to choose, but first, you need to have a good pool of houses to choose from, right? Luckily in Belgium and this digitalised era (might be coming up slower in Belgium, but it’s on the way), there’re ways to get notified when new property is available instead of going through all real estate agencies’ window. Below are the common online real estate platforms and common agencies in Flanders.

• Platforms:
  • Immoweb
    • Probably the most well-known one across Belgium, nothing fancy but basic display of pictures and other infos
  • Zimmo
    • On top of typical pic & info, more insights on price, e.g. price per square meter comparison with other listing and historical price of similar property
  • Immovlan

To be continued…