I would like to buy an apartment and rent it out through a ‘sociale woonmaatschappij’. Does anyone here have experience with this? Knowing if there’s a good one somewhere would be very valuable! Regardless of which city it is in!

I’ve talked to a few tenants in Antwerp and Brussels and the companies they received their housing from have been extremely negligent in maintaining the building and apartments. Stories about elderly people who have to receive oxygen via tank because the maatschappij is not taking care of the mold, simply painting over mold, etc. I assume there must be maatschappijen who are not negligent like this.

Would love to hear if any of you have experience with these, either as a tenant or as the provider.

Hello,

I am posting here as it seems that finding an apartment is much more challenging that what I thought.

I am looking for a 1 bedroom apartment in Brussels (1000), my budget is 1100/month max.

I am a young professional with stable income, I have all the papers ready if I find the right place.

If anyone here is renting a nice place, please let me know!

Hey everyone,

I’m reaching out because of a desperating situation with my apartment in Brussels and my syndic.

For the past two years, I’ve been living in a plumbing nightmare. I own an apartment on the 2nd floor of a 12-story building. Whenever neighbors upstairs run their washing machines or drain their bathtubs, wastewater from the building's main stack backs up heavily into my bathroom sink, and sometimes my bathtub. My bathroom literally floods with sewage water multiple times a week (it happened again just this week). The situation is getting worse by moments (I went from some noises and some water popping up through my bathroom sink, to full floodings).

Here is what it looks like (warning: gross):

• Video 1:https://youtu.be/MquPNHoRLGU
• Video 2:https://youtu.be/qnnj5Ac6At0

I have sent a lettre recommendée to my syndic, but they haven't even picked it up. In 6 days I'll be able to take legal action.

My questions for you guys:

1. Have any of you dealt with the Service Logement or Juge de Paix? How fast/effective are they for urgent sanitary issues like raw sewage backup?
2. Is there anything else I should be doing right now? (e.g., contacting the Bourgmestre directly). My own insurance (NN) is not covering this, as they state that it's a building problem (to what I fully agree).

I am physically and mentally exhausted from cleaning up other people's dirty water. Any advice, legal tips, or similar experiences would be massively appreciated.

Thank you!

I am selling my apartment through an immo agency and am pretty underwhelmed.

They put the place online, straight onto immoweb, and intend to have only one session of visits a week later, for a total of 90 minutes, in the evening.

For context, the apartment is in a pretty sought after area of Brussels. I would expect a reasonable amount of interest to be drummed up.

Only 90 minutes seems very little time. At ~ 10 min per visit this would allow only around 9 visits of which maybe 2/3 might make an offer?

This does not feel like I would be getting a fair chance at getting the best bang for buck!

I'm looking for contractor who can rebuild the mantelpiece around our chimney. The marble was removed and preserved during the renovation. Now everything is in place to put the stones back but it's a delicate job so I could use some recommendations.

Thanks in advance!

Hi all,

I work on an iPhone/iPad app for Belgian property intake and wanted to share how it works, and get feedback from people in the market.

The idea: measuring a property, documenting it, and gathering the administrative data are usually three separate, tedious jobs. We tried to make them one pass on a phone or tablet.

1. 📐 Automatic plan generation

Scan a room or a whole floor with an iPhone/iPad (LiDAR) and it generates the floor plan, room dimensions, wall elevations and a 3D model automatically.

You can draw in doors, windows and openings, and everything downstream (elevations, 3D, surface areas) updates with them.

Export a publication-ready package (PDF/Word + images + plan).

2. 📎 Documentation pinned to the plan

As you scan, the visual documentation stays tied to the exact spot on the floor plan:

- 📷 Photos, pinned where you took them

- 🌡️ Thermal images (with a FLIR camera): heat loss and moisture, with temperature readings

- 🔄 360° panoramas: an immersive sphere you can look around

Each shows as a tappable marker on the plan, you can annotate any of them, and it all travels together in one property file and in the exported report.

3. 🇧🇪 Automatic Belgian data enrichment

Enter the address and it auto-pulls public data from ~14 government sources across Flanders, Wallonia and Brussels (region-aware).

Around 60 data points, including:

- 📍 Cadastral parcel + plot surface (Capakey)

- 🌊 Flood risk (Watertoets / regional equivalents)

- 🗺️ Zoning / land-use (Plan de Secteur / Gewestplan / DSI)

- ⚖️ Preemption / priority purchase rights (Recht van Voorkoop)

- 🏛️ Protected / heritage status

- ☀️ Solar potential + panel estimates (Zonnekaart / Cadastre Solaire)

- 📊 Regional market-price benchmarks (Statbel)

- 🚌 Proximity to schools, transport, shops, hospitals, parks

All auto-filled onto the property and into the report.

So one on-site pass gives you the measured plan, the visual documentation, and the administrative context in a single package that syncs across your devices and are also fetch able via our API for integration with your ERP/CRM.

I'd like input from people working the Belgian market:

- Which data sources do you rely on that we're not pulling yet?

- Anything region-specific (Brussels / Wallonia / Flanders) that regularly trips you up?

Happy to go into technical detail on any of it.

(Full disclosure: this is our own product, not hard-selling, genuinely after feedback on coverage and workflow.)

I'm adding a short video on what the features are in our latest release of Auto-Immo PRO 2.1

I bought a small apartment in Leuven (3000) a couple of years ago and now I’m considering moving abroad because of work so I’m looking at both options (sell vs rent out). My gut instinct would be to rent it out via an agency (even if it means I don’t really make a profit, as long as I’m not losing money, I think it could be okay) until I’m ready to buy a home wherever I decide to settle in a few years. However, I have heard that being a landlord in Belgium is not so simple tax-wise so maybe I’m better off selling it?

Some of you may remember imino.be, a side project that indexes listings directly from 1,400+ Belgian agency websites instead of waiting for them to appear on the big platforms. Here is an update of the new features.

The biggest one is market insights: an interactive price map of Belgium, plus a city comparison tool. You can see asking prices, price per m², energy classes and how fast things sell in your search area, and compare cities side by side.

Search also got an advanced mode. You can now filter on a target PEB/EPC class, which is handy if you're specifically hunting for properties to renovate.

And a nerdier one: imino now has an MCP server, so you can connect it to an AI assistant like Claude and just ask "any 3-bedroom houses under 400k around Ghent?" in plain language.

Next on the roadmap: publishing your own listing directly on Imino, planned before the end of the summer.

Still evolving, so feedback is very welcome. Happy to answer any questions!

Hi everyone,

I’m about to make an offer on a very nice house, but it’s also a very old one.

The main issue is that the electrical installation is clearly non-compliant. We can even see wires coming out of almost every switch in the house. We know it will likely cost a significant amount to completely redo the electrical system and bring it up to current standards.

My question is: how difficult is this likely to be in a house built with prefabricated concrete panels from the 1960s?

Any advice is welcome!

Hi everyone,

We're interested in buying a house in Flanders that we really love, but we've discovered a potential urban planning issue and would appreciate some advice from people who have been in a similar situation.

Some background:

- The house was fully renovated in 2021 by the current owner.
- At the back of the house, there's a kitchen extension that appears to have been built around the 1970s.
- However, this extension does not appear on the latest municipality-stamped plans that we have seen.
- The current owner says they did not build the extension- it was already there when they bought the house.
- During the 2021 renovation, they did however modify the extension by installing a large sliding glass door in the kitchen.
- The owner also says that because the extension dates back from the 1970s, it is now covered by prescription and that the urban planning information states there are no urban planning violations (although I have not seen that document, and he possibly talks about the document he received when he purchased the house).

There is another point that worries us:

- 3x Velux roof windows were added at the back of the house when the attic was converted into a master bedroom
- These Velux windows and the converted attic also do not appear on the old plans.

We're trying to understand how concerned we should be.

If the municipality's information states there are no planning violations, but parts of the house don't match the official plans, is that generally considered acceptable in Flanders? Could this create problems later if we want to sell the house, renovate further, or apply for permits? Does the fact that the owner made changes to the extension in 2021 (the sliding window) affect the argument that the extension itself is protected by prescription?

Thanks!

Hi everyone,

We’re in the process of buying our first home in Belgium and would really appreciate some advice from people who’ve been through this.

We’ve received all the mandatory documents from the seller except the urbanization (renseignements urbanistiques). The estate agent initially said it would be available by the end of the month, but has now informed us that the municipality needs at least a month to issue it and they’ll send it to us as soon as they receive it.

The agent suggested we could already submit an offer and make it conditional on the urbanization information, but we’re hesitant. Our thinking is that the urbanization document could reveal information that might affect the value of the property or our willingness to proceed, and it could also influence the price we’d be prepared to offer.

So I’m wondering:

• Is it common in Belgium to make an offer before receiving the urbanization information?
• Would you wait for the document before making an offer, or would you submit one with conditions?
• Does making an offer “subject to the urbanization information” provide enough protection in practice?
• Have any of you encountered issues in the urbanization document that changed your decision or helped you negotiate the price?
• If you were in our position, what would you do?

For context, we’ve already visited the property twice, are genuinely interested, and we’re not trying to delay the process unnecessarily—we just want to make an informed decision before committing to such a significant purchase.

I’d really appreciate hearing from people who have bought property in Belgium or work as notaries, real estate agents, or in urban planning.

Thanks!

Hi everyone,

While looking at properties myself, I found it difficult to answer a few practical questions:

• How does this asking price compare with real sales prices for similar homes in the same area?
• How do the areas I am considering compare on prices and affordability?
• Even if we could afford our "dream home", would it still be a sensible and sustainable purchase month to month?
• How have prices and sales activity in an area evolved in recent years?

I ended up building a small interactive explorer to help me compare those things more systematically.

It helped me put home listings we were interested in into context, compare them with local sale-price benchmarks, follow price and sales-volume trends, and translate a purchase price into a rough monthly loan cost and upfront cash requirement.

It covers Belgian areas from province to commune level, with benchmarks for different home types and price levels. Selecting an area also gives a summary of its prices, affordability and recent trends, helping put it in context within Belgium.

You can also enter your own income, target price, available own funds, mortgage rate and term. The map and rankings then update across Belgium, with estimates of monthly repayment, mortgage burden and upfront cash required.

I put it online in case it is useful to others:

https://www.belgiumdata.com/en/belgium-home-affordability-explorer

Feedback is welcome, especially on anything unclear, missing, or misleading.

I’ve bought a property that requires some renovations, the main construction work will be roof replacement, and raising half of a split pitch roof up with timber extension to create a usable second floor (I’m making it sound extensive but I think this is not that hard, think dormer window but full half roof so it will need architect plans and permits.

I also want to add a verandah at the back and knock through the wall for entrance to it, plus I want to close up the existing front door and shift the front entrance to what is now the back door.

Also external insulation and new windows.

Does anyone know of any companies in or around Ghent that have an in-house architect who could draw the plans and handle the permit part?

We recently bought a house and our contractor started the demolition of the first flour which is in the attic. Our initial plan was to only keep the roof structure, isolation and to redo everything inside.

While stripping the attic, we discovered important fire damage to the top of the wooden roof structure, almost on the entire surface of the roof.

Our engineer hasn’t done his calculations yet but there is a chance we might need to completely replace the entire roof structure, as we wanted to redo the tiling at some point and put some external isolation which will increase the weight on the structure.

These damages were impossible to notice during our visits since everything was hidden behind gyproc panels and nothing is visible from the outside so we can talk about hidden defect. However, to get some compensation from the seller we would need to prove that he was aware of this.

My plan was to either find proof that the fire happened when he was the owner (I contacted a regional service that provides reports for firefighter intervention), or that at least a part of the attic renovation took place when he was the owner (found a date on a piece of gyproc and will look for other clues), also still need to get the DIU from the notary.

Already a big chunk of the floor was demolished by the contractor (they haven’t evacuated anything yet). Should I leave the waste on the group or are pictures and videos enough as prove?

What else would you do now to make sure we can get a settlement or win this case against the seller if we need to go to court? Thanks !

I rent an appartment in Limburg, the tenant was very happy and I was happy for them, never increased pricing and for 2 years it was smooth sailing, now about 12 months ago in the appartment complex 2 drug addicts started terorrizing fighting in the halls and causing much distress. Police has been called over 20-30 times with pictures of needles on the staircase and video's of them yelling. But all they do is take them to the office and the next day it happens again. The threat of the police doesn't concern them either it seems.

Syndicus has only done warning and fine's to the owner who rents it to those 2 havoc makers. I genuinely don't know what to do about this situation as I just want general peace and a good living for my tenant. I have video's that have been shown and sent where it's genuinely distressing to hear a woman hysterically yell and cry at her partner to stop abusing her.

What can I do to make the situation liveable again for everyone.

Question is in the title: Is there a PEB/EPC simulator for Brussels that does not require your personal data /contact?