All Forum Posts by: Thomas L.

Hi man! Welcome.
Yes we have some Belgians here, like me! I am looking to create a group of Belgian RE investors to discuss, let me know if you are interested.
I bought in Flanders (Antwerp area) privately. I have our own home split into 2 and a 5-unit building.

Cheers,

Thomas

Hi @Alexia M. nice to meet you. I am also living in Belgium and investing in real estate locally. But also traveled to portugal for several weeks to discover it as a great location to FIRE once we have built up our RE portfolio.

If you have any questions about the BE real estate market, shoot. What Victor says might be a concern, even if you move to portugal and want to invest locally you might want to consider moving your company too so that banks start trusting you. The paperwork in Portugal seems to be a hell is what I have heard from several people who moved there so you might want to already start learning portugese  in the mean time :)

Btw in portugal I also looked at real estate. Prices have risen a lot due to the rise of tourists and foureign investors. So you might want to focus on growing area's or short term rentals with a unique feature if you want to compete close to Lisbon.

Hi @Bert Boex sure. Physical or digital?

Welcome Joel! Also from Belgium :) so you triggered my keyword alert.
Great to hear you already got started, in what area in Belgium are you active?

Let me know if you have any questions or want to discuss a strategy

@Peter Cammu i'm sorry the room was not available anymore. I will propose another date soon.
@Dan Grieve: when exactly will you be in Belgium?

Hi @Peter Cammu, @Robbe Claessens, @Anthony Lafaut, @Ben Golsteyn, @Dan Grieve I am currently in the process of organising the first Belgian Biggerpockets Meetup. It will be in Antwerp.

Would the 4th of February work for you guys? The exact date can be discussed if it doesn't work for most of us.

Hi Camille, welcome to BP!
Personally i'm not familiar enough with the Brussels area to give you any advice on where to find properties, but in general, you will notice that C neighborhoods tend to produce the most opportunities in Belgium. So sounds like you are right on track.
Do make sure you read up on local laws on flipping houses, since the rules are different from the US or CA. One example: the hight costs concerned with buying a new property (about 15% on top of the purchase price, except for first purchase) will need to be recovered from your flipping business, just to break even. You can get some of that money back if you sell within 24 months, but when you do that multiple times, the tax authorities will start to count those profits as "professional income" meaning you will start paying taxes on it. And taxes in BE are ridiculously high, although there are workarounds. For this reason you won't find too many flippers here. It makes it harder to make a decent profit, BUT that means less competition ;) 

Good luck and let me know if I can help you out or you want to buy something in the Antwerp area.

sounds cool. Add me :)

Update: Many months later the property was still on the market and I bought it :) In the meantime, the owner did some renovations. I bought it for 269k. Total rent each month: €2800. The monthly costs for utilities will be more like +-  350. I have a 100% loan on 25y at 1.4 variable rate (can max double), which comes down to about €1070/m. The property was appraised by the bank at 317k, so in their eyes it's only a 85% loan on value.

The insurance each month is €45 and taxes about €120, so if all tenants pay (currently the problem), than this deal should cash flow up to €1.215/m net! As I explained in my first post, I invested about 36k into the property. So that's a 40% ROI.

Now, I inherited these tenants and not all of them are paying, so let's see how that goes. But I'm really happy I finally got it closed :) yay