Dream Home in Belgium

To buy your dream home 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 property which checks all your “dream home” boxes. In the end, compromise might need to be made, but on which criteria? Should it be location? Or maybe the size?

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
    • Similar level of details as Immoweb
• Agencies (varies depending on region, below are common ones in Vlaams-Brabant):
  • ERA
    • Quite well-known agency across Belgium, we’ve got the free evaluation when selling our previous house, and it was done in a structured/analytical approach
  • New Immo Service
    • We’re buying a new house through this agency, so far they have been fast and responsive, a solid agency.
  • Home Consult
    • Agency with an energetic team, they have a facebook group where properties are posted first before becoming available on the platforms
  • Latour & Petit
    • Agency with a nice website and good selection
  • Engel & Voelkers
    • Agency with good coverage in Belgium

And the list will go on especially with the agencies, as there’re enormous amounts of agencies across Belgium in the end.

But regardless of platforms, agencies, they all have one important thing in common:

You can setup an alert/get notified of new listing as soon as you specify the criteria!

Once this’s done, you can say goodbye to opening up all the websites one by one to check what’s the newest listing, and simply check your mailbox to see the listing served to you directly. Some agencies even have a facebook group on invitation base, where they post new properties first before posting them on the platforms or own website, so feel free to ask the agency if you can be added to the group.

With all the alerts & notifications, hope you’ll soon come across your dream house! If compromise has to be made, better do it on the things can be changed 🙂

So now you’ve found some nice houses and made appointment to visit them, what to check exactly? Other than the general look & feel, there’re quite a few technical things to check through in Belgium, let’s dive deeper in the next step: Visiting.

To be continued…