Buying Our House

The process of buying a house in Belgium is very different from that of the UK.  Of course I am comparing buying a house in the UK in 1996, when compared to buying one in Belgium in 2007.  The financial crisis and the waking up of financial institutions to risk has meant that they have tightened up everywhere. 

Taking this in stages, one of the first tasks is to get finance, in the UK the market was at rock bottom which meant that more often than not sellers were offering to pay the deposit for buyers, which is what happened in my case.  The flat I bought was on the market for £24,000 in 1996.  I had absolutely no trouble at all in securing a mortgage in a couple of hours, even though I was on £9,000 gross pa.

In Belgium I had a bit of trouble just negotiating as the house was valued at 190,000 euros and the market was such that any viable property was being snapped up fairly quickly.  It is worth mentioning that you get a lot more for your money in Belgium than you do in the UK.  Anyway, the additional costs you need to pay here are:  The VAT (BTW) of either 6% for houses older than 5 years or 21% if they are younger than 5 years old, the solicitors fees (a fixed % of the property value regardless of the quality of service), the loan arrangement fees and in our case the life insurance policies to cover anything bad happening to either of us.  The reason I had trouble is that I was not resident in Belgium, which meant that they could not get access to my salary.  Apparently this is a requirement in case I should default for whatever reason.  When we made enquiries we could not be given an answer as to how much we could be loaned and therefore there was no quick answer.  In fact because of the builder's holiday and the generally slow way in which mortgage applications take place, this turned out to be a very painful and drawn out process.  We engaged the same solicitors as the seller, which on face value may not have been that wise but turned out to be quite fortuitous.

When An agreed to buy the house from the agent negotiating on the part of the seller, she aimed for a transfer date of the 15 October 2007 but was concerned that this might not be enough time to get everything sorted out.  She had been assured that the solicitors and the bank would complete the arrangements in time.  It is critical to point out that in Belgium, when you sign the offer and it is accepted, you can have a maximum period of 3 months to complete the process.  Despite a verbal agreement that the 15th October was flexible on the part of the seller, this turned out to be worthless.  The key point to hoist in is that whatever you sign up to is the thing you will be held to when it comes to the crunch, you will find that this is the case with all transactions of this type, your word means nothing.  When I first came across here I read that you had to be careful about giving verbal agreement to contracts, it is total crap.

Anyway, as the transfer date closed in the solicitor was delaying for one reason or another and low and behold we got a letter saying that there would be interest due for each day of delay.  I contacted the solicitor and stated quite bluntly that, as he was working for both the seller and the buyer, he would be liable for the additional costs as he was the person causing the delay.  The bank had processed the mortgage, eventually, and it was up to the solicitor to complete the process.  He soon managed to get a move on after that and it was completed on time.

During this process I wanted to borrow about 120% of the value of the house and normally, at this time, it was routine to be able to do this.  Because of the bank dithering and taking so long to approve the mortgage I had, in the space of a few hours in the UK, secured additional borrowing against my property in the North East of England.  I would now have to face the prospect  of transferring Sterling over to Belgium, just when the euro/£ began its decline from 1.5 to its present 1.18 euros per £.  It did drop further almost to parity, so you can imagine my annoyance at this additional complication in obtaining finance.

The most trying aspect of buying a house was the seemingly endless delays in getting people to do their jobs, the bank and the solicitor in the main.  We originally used Immotheaker from Aarschot but they failed even the basics of keeping an appointment.  We then decided to use Leuven branch of Immotheaker, which was far more responsive and helpful.  Immotheaker is a financial broker and they did all of the arrangements for us regarding loans and insurance, they made it easy.

In the UK, the problem was the solicitor had forgotten all of the things we had discussed when I met him at his office, especially they key point of the seller paying the deposit.  A quick reminder sorted that out.  During my time with this flat I re-mortgaged several times and each time it was a very quick and convenient process.  Nothing is quick and convenient in Belgium when it comes to buying a house.  Even the extra borrowing we obtained to get a pitched roof instead of the flat roof involved solicitors, fees and another lengthy arrangement to cover the process.

The lesson from this is never trust anyone's word, get a signed document which details this.  I insisted on getting the solicitor to ensure that the seller retained responsibility for the de-commissioned fuel tank that was buried somewhere in the grounds of the house.  He was very blasé and when I started getting angry he just gave in and called his far more competent assistant in, who assured me that it would be written into the contract.  He can stand by if I ever find out that he was lying!  The same man kept An and I waiting as he discussed the décor of his house in plain view of us.  Our appointment time came and went and he then had the balls to try and persuade us to arrange a post nuptial agreement to cover our house should one of us die.  Apparently half  of the house would go to the family under current arrangements as we had bought this before getting married.  All the time my ticket on the car was getting closer to expiry and in fact I ended up with a parking ticket.  I was livid and ended up demanding that they pay it as they had kept us unnecessarily.  In the end I did not follow this up but rather resolved to never ever use them again and not to recommend them should anyone ask.

I got the feeling that there were people just on a gravy train and that within Aarschot there was a small town complex and that everyone is just taking advantage.  I am sure it was just me being sceptical and wary of being had, still didn't make any difference though!

The house we bought, although fundamentally sound was in dire need of updating.  in fact just about any house that was available on the market needed a good gutting and refurbishment.  It seemed that no one had decorated since moving in sometime in the early 70s.  The house was a 1970s social housing build, part of a 100 house development. There was wood panelling throughout the ground floor and on the ceilings, the bathroom and kitchen were original and probably antique.  It was dark and in need of brightening up.  I have to say that housing design in Belgium is extremely varied with all sorts of shapes and designs, almost as though there are no planning controls.  In fact, as I understand it, they have really only just started to get to grips with planning controls as I will reveal in another blog about our loft.  They do seem to like narrow buildings though and in a lot of cases they look like bunkers, lego block buildings with narrow windows.  It is too varied to generalise though.  One thing for certain is that you usually get land and a garage too.  In the bigger cities this is less so, but for the most part you do well.  In the UK garages, relatively speaking, are rare as is the availability of off road parking.  In fact a lot of small gardens in the UK have been overlaid with concrete to provide this parking space.

Of course things have now changed both in the UK and Belgium as a result of the financial crisis, mainly in terms of securing mortgages.  I still think that convenience and service is better in the UK, but I am sure there are many with experience in the UK who will disagree.