MikePadgett.com

We had decided to stay in temporary accommodation during our first weeks in Belgium. Eventually we found an apartment of our own to our liking. So began a chain of events whose links were many.

Temporary accommodation

Renting by the month in the early period was a sensible option, though reasonably-priced temporary accommodation in Brussels is both expensive and surprisingly difficult to find.

It wouldn’t take that much of an investment to corner the market in a line of business for which there must be extraordinary demand here.

We used Brussels Business Flats‘ Eurosquare serviced apartments on Rue des Eburons. We wish we hadn’t.

In the event, an excellent location was somewhat outweighed by living adjacent to the constant stale cooking smells of numerous Indian IT placements, a poor quality Internet connection as an expensive optional extra and having to wait 10 days for a change of towels (the rule, not the exception, by the way).

Indeed, the overall high cost hardly seemed worthwhile, especially when you consider the mould and the cockroaches that eventually forced us to leave. Leave me a comment if you would like to know more about this incident with Brussels Business Flats (BBF) - I have the photos to prove it!

At the time of writing, the promised refund has yet to materialise, though we are actively pursuing one.

Choosing a rental property

Property is relatively abundant in Brussels. While J completed her first few weeks at work, I was walking the streets and getting a feel for the city. What seemed like unfocused wanderings at the time were later transformed into and solid local experience and near-impressive driving knowledge.

As with any other location, it was essential to establish what factors were most important. Many of the expat websites harp on about family requirements, so that stuff didn’t apply, but that didn’t mean you’d want to live just anywhere. Three key factors for us were:

1. Taxation - communal taxes vary widely, within Bruxelles-Capitale there are 19 communes and, as it turned out in our case, the choice of a particular street within a desired quartier can put you in a different commune to a neighbour three doors down
2. Public transport - coverage from the “faster” services is patchy in some areas of Brussels particularly when you consider what’s important to you
3. Somewhere sympa - in some quartiers there isn’t much entertainment, whilst in others you’ll be an unwilling spectator at the annual street riot

Up to 30% of Bruxellois are foreigners, it is said. The number of rental agencies that speak your language will be significantly less. At the time of writing, my written French was better than my spoken, so I conducted most of our dealings with agents by email. Every Belgian can get tetchy about languages too because of the long story on that particular subject (a separate item will be necessary to discuss), so it was important to assess from websites and blurbs whether the landlord or agent was a Vlaams or Wallon and manage accordingly (I used English with the former and French with the latter).

A culture of cutting out middlemen also thrives in Brussels, so it was worth looking out for the orange A LOUER/TE HUUR signs in windows, though in practice I was usually too chicken to follow up on the mobile phone numbers for adverts in French or Dutch.

Accordingly, the Internet was the most efficient method of finding apartments in the initial stages. Immoweb was the best site hands down in terms of usability and choice (good mix of private and agency properties), and the one through which we eventually found our apartment.

Official documents

Even if you, your employer, your landlord and your local government representative all speak English and your business is conducted as such, any official documents between you have to be agreed in one of Bruxelles-Capitale’s official languages. In other words, French or Dutch. Outside the Capital Region, it’s French for Wallonia and Dutch for Flanders of course.

This means that, if you’re not fluent in your local official language, you’re going to need a lot of help. At the time of writing, I could read and write French pretty well even if my spoken language was relatively poor. This turned out to be essential.

Types of lease

Research informed us that leases in Belgium are all longer term than the UK. In some areas, particularly in and around the European Quarter, you can find 12 month tenancies geared towards professionals but these are few and far between and the knock-on effect is that shorter periods tend to attract a higher monthly rental figure.

Three year and nine year leases are the most common and the latter is preferred since it usually has the more lenient terms for early termination by the tenant. Typically, a nine year lease will demand three months’ rent from the tenant if he/she decides to leave in Year 1 of the lease; two months’ rent will be due to leave in Year 2; one month’s rent will be due in Year 3. Thereafter, leaving before the natural end of the lease will not attract any penalty.

In our case, we managed to find a three year lease with the same terms of early termination as those of a nine year lease. It is important to check carefully.

Rental guarantee

To lease an apartment in Brussels, as in the rest of Belgium, you need to have a rental guarantee.

The rental guarantee secures the lease in the form of an often hefty sum of money (in our case the value of three months’ rent). The money goes into a blocked account at the bank in the name of the tenant, then a further legal document is provided by the bank and signed by both parties to the lease. Because this process is pretty much unique to Belgium, only Belgian banks are likely to be able to arrange it.

Since the rental guarantee secures the lease and both parties must sign, it usually has to be established contemporaneously with the signing of the lease. The prospective tenant therefore needs to arrange the appointment with his/her selected bank in advance as soon as he/she knows when the lease signing will happen.

Subject to the satisfactory ending of the lease according to its terms, the sum of the rental guarantee will be released to the tenant by the bank and any interest earned will also be due!

Registering at the Commune

Communes in Brussels tend to consist of one part Alice In Wonderland and two parts Kafka’s worst nightmare. The lovely sounding maison communale or gemeentehuis turned out to be a hulky neo-Gothic construction in the tradition of Dutch guildhouses and London’s St Pancras station, designed to aggrandise even the pettiest of public powermongers and to frighten the statusless and the newly-resident.

And the scare stories are numerous. Down in St Gilles/Sint Gillis, a colleague of J was recently subjected to the evil afternoon angst of a local administrator, on top of several hours in an echoey waiting room and the usual eyeball-bursting ordeal of forms and signatures.

In our Transylvanian charnelhouse, behind every creaking door lurks a beady-eyed official waiting to suck your life-force from you, even if all you want is a temporary parking permit.

Parking permits for residents and for moving house

Traffic is horrendous in Brussels. And parking on your own street could be described as an opportunistic slalom, even if you have a parking permit for residents (carte riverain). To obtain one means a trip to the dreaded maison communale where a frosty reception consisting of misanthropy and creeping suspicion awaits you. The agony can be assuaged by combining this with communal registration. Proof that you own the car is required. For company cars, you’ll need a letter from your employer.

At the time of writing, we are doing our very best to suppress the fear of what will happen when our company car is recalled for replacement in a few months’ time. A new number plate will mean a new permit…

If you’re moving house (déménagement) to a busy street, you’ll need a temporary parking permit, available somewhere in the labyrinth of the maison communale for a variable cost depending on the particular commune. The always reassuring no-parking signs can be placed in the relevant position on the pavement or the street which will notify drivers to keep the area clear during the time of your move.

Services and utilities

When we first arrived, we didn’t think to record the meter numbers and their values. In the UK the landlord or his/her agent always provided that information and in Brussels it got lost in a hundred other tasks.

A week or so after moving in, and therefore a week or so later than appropriate, I called a supplier (gas and electricity are now privatised, water is supplied by the Region) and struggled through with spoken French until the values for the meters were requested, which I didn’t have of course.

As I stuttered with the scant details I had, the very image of pleasant customer service was painted over with the increasingly rough strokes of cranky Belgian impatience. Woe betide that young fellow if he should ever move his scrawny, parochial, backwater backside abroad himself. Then, when the wellington boot’s on the other foot, he’ll see how difficult it is to be a foreigner.

Another typical Belgian response, this time on the Internet, is the ubiquitous error message. Try to find any vaguely important information from your local government, utility company or employer and you will be advised that you do not have permission, the page was not found or your account has expired.

Some guesswork allowed me to paper over the cracks of another failed online enquiry, this time at the Bruxelles Propreté website, where I was trying to complete the simple task of finding out which days my household rubbish would be collected. There was a database error on the query, so I clicked the link for the Contact page, which led to an ASP.NET error, so I ended up writing an email using a guessed address.

Rubbish is collected twice a week by the Region. One of these collections will take your white bags (household, non-recyclable) and the other will take white, yellow (cardboard, paper) and blue (plastic bottles, containers and cartons). However, use the wrong bags and nothing at all will be collected. The correct bags (carrying the Capitale logo and blurb) are available from all decent supermarkets in Brussels.