MikePadgett.com

Relocating to Brussels: the final haul

— Moving to Brussels: temporary accommodation, commune registration, parking permits, utilities, rubbish collection, doctors, dentists.”

I’ve come to believe that the most important thing when relocating for work is to buy some time. Most of the important decisions could only be properly informed by our experience of being here. The more familiarity we could gain before making them, the better our decisions would be.

Temporary accommodation

By way of illustration, we decided to stay in temporary accommodation during our first weeks in Brussels. It might cost us rather more in the short term, but we could take our time when choosing a more permanent place to live.

In Brussels, temporary accommodation at a reasonable price on a monthly basis is surprisingly difficult to find.

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Relocation: the final haul

Now we had an apartment in Brussels, all we had to do was bring all of our furniture over from the UK...!

It wouldn’t take much of an investment to corner the market since there must be extraordinary demand here, but then the famously high taxation in Belgium must put off many entrepreneurs.

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:

• Constant, stale cooking smells from the rooms of Indian IT personnel, the surprising numbers of whom fill these places like dormitories
• Optional, expensive, poor-quality Internet connection
• Waiting 10 days for a change of towels: of course it isn’t a hotel but who uses the same towel for 10 days straight?

If that wasn’t enough, we eventually decided to leave when the mould and the cockroaches got too much. Sadly, I’m not exaggerating, I have the photos to prove it! At the time of writing, the promised refund has yet to materialise (it appeared some weeks later – Mike).

Choosing a rental property

Apartments for rent are relatively abundant in Brussels – anyone who tells you otherwise is making excuses for their inflated rent – though quality and prices obviously vary wildly depending on the commune.

So while J spent her first few weeks at work, I hit the streets to get a feel for the city. What might have felt like unfocused wanderings at the time quickly matured into a body of local knowledge, on which we could properly base a decision.

As with any other location, it was essential to establish what factors were most important.

Many of the expat websites – which I won’t quote here – harp on about family requirements, for example, but that didn’t apply to us.

So the three key factors for us (a younger couple without children) were:

1. Public transport – coverage from the “faster” services is patchy in some areas of Brussels
2. 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
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 Brussels’ residents are foreigners it is estimated. You can be certain that the number of rental agencies that speak your language will be significantly less than that, but the number is growing all the time.

English is generally spoken by almost all Flemish and most Walloons of the younger generations (these latter to varying degrees). Indeed many organisations are actively employing foreigners to address that growing multilingual marketshare.

At the time of writing, my written French was better than my spoken, so I conducted most of our dealings with agents in French by email. Often I would send my email and receive a reply in English (the quality of my French obviously gave me away!)

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.

Since writing this article, I’ve heard anecdotally that people of certain Eastern European nations can sometimes find themselves unwelcome when applying for rentals. Apparently some property owners tend to conflate the ordinary hardworking professional with the sort of lawless itinerant stereotype evoked by popular newspapers.

So the Internet was the most efficient method of finding apartments in the initial stages. Immoweb was by far the best site in terms of usability and choice (good mix of private and agency properties).

We eventually found our apartment this way: selecting what looked good, testing the area against what we knew and could find out and then going to do viewings. A viewing can be disheartening experience when, like in any other big city, you arrive to find a big crowd all there for the same reason and/or the agent never turns up. Try, try, try again seems to be the motto here!

Official documents and language

I have already mentioned language issues above. 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 reasonably capable in your local official language, you’re going to need a lot of help. As previously mentioned, at the time of writing I handled written French pretty well even if my oral French was relatively poor. This reading ability turned out to be vital during the rental and registration processes which I’ll come to in a moment.

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 so-called European Quarter, you might find 12-month tenancies aimed at Euroworkers but outside of the temporary lodging scene, these are rare. It follows that shorter tenancy periods – monthly or six monthly, for example – tend to cost more in monthly rent.

Three year and nine year leases sound frighteningly long but they’re the most common terms and they can always be terminated early (at a cost).

The nine year version sounds the worst but it can actually offer tenants slightly more lenient terms for early termination.

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 should not attract any penalty.

Keep in mind that, as mentioned above, all lease documents are provided in the official language.

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. This was both fortuitous and illustrative of the capricious nature of rentals. It is important to check very carefully, even if you’ve had a coup de coeur on the property!

Rental guarantee

To rent an apartment in Brussels, as in the rest of Belgium, you’ll also 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 equivalent 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. 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

Brussels isn’t so much a city as it is a region, in character as well as administrative structure. The actual city of Brussels (postcode 1000) is a small, heart-shaped enclave surrounded by a tight inner ring road. The region consists of nineteen communes, former villages long since sucked into the metropolitan vortex. The village mentality persists however: locals of one commune often know surprisingly little about the neighbouring communes.

If you’re moving to Brussels, chances are you’ll find yourself choosing to live in one of these nineteen communes. And in doing so, you’ll get to know your local maison communale (NL: gemeentehuis), a sort of town hall with a dizzyingly broad remit. Like everything in this multi-faceted country, they vary wildly and each one can be a source of linguistic friction.

A typical maison communale consists of one part Alice In Wonderland and two parts Kafka’s worst nightmare. In physical terms, it might be a squat architectural cast-off full of surprisingly docile administrators or (like ours) it could be a hulky neo-Gothic pile designed to aggrandise even the pettiest of public powermongers and to terrify everyone else.

The scare stories are numerous, but there’s probably an equal number of peaceful, queue-free idylls, particularly in communes whose population tends to be static.

The first time you visit, it’ll be to register as a new resident in the commune. Every time you move to another commune within Belgium, you must re-register, but the first time is the worst since you’re simultaneously registering your residency in the country as well as the commune.

Perhaps three visits and a home visit from the local police later (they need to check you really do live where you say you do) a little green card arrives, announcing the temporary end of your hassles. And you can breathe a sigh of relief.

For now at least. Because in the Transylvanian charnelhouse that passes for your maison communale, behind every creaking door lurks a beady-eyed official waiting to suck your lifeforce 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.

This 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.

And what happens if you need to replace your company car every few months? A new number plate equals a new permit, and a new permit means another trip to the maison communale…

If you’re moving house (déménagement) to a busy street, you’ll need a temporary parking permit, available somewhere in the labyrinth of the aforementioned maison communale for a variable cost depending on the particular commune in which you find yourself.

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.

Two things will happen as a result of this commonsense act: one, you’ll avoid beeping horns and angry expressions and two, you’ll have the rare privilege of seeing what the kerb looks like for the first (and probably last) time because the cars have cleared off!

Services and utilities

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

A week or so after moving in – and therefore a week or so later than was strictly appropriate – I called a supplier (gas and electricity are now privatised while 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. If you use Electrabel, more often than not your bored, francophone customer service rep will actually be in France.

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.

Take my advice: if you’re worried about making this kind of call – and this applies to any utility or subscription-type service – always select Dutch as your language of choice when prompted. The Dutch speaking reps can switch flawlessly to English right from the hello!

For general information, when you try to find online any vaguely important information from your local government, utility company or employer and you’ll probably be advised that the page was not found or that your account has expired, even if you have no account!

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. The website does occasionally work, but if not send an email and amazingly they will actually reply personally.

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. Sometimes you get the angry “stickers of shame” that they plant on your bags and then leave them right there.

Worse still, put your bags out too early the night before collection and you can expect a fine. Having said that, if you live in an apartment within a bigger building, it’s difficult to imagine how they would figure out your own individual responsibility unless they know what you consume!

The correct bags (carrying the Capitale logo and blurb) are available from most supermarkets and larger general stores in Brussels.

Health matters and English-speaking doctors / dentists in Brussels

We’ve got all the insurance and we’ve since racked up visits to both the dentist and doctor. I’ll probably write more about these matters in due course.

Doctors Roger Verheul and Rachel Stockley are located in the European Quarter (Boulevard Charlemagne, 37 / 02 73 56 694) and are a GP double-act that previously practised in England.

Dentists in Brussels are both common and commonly expensive, as evidenced by the original artworks one often finds in their waiting rooms. My dentist is a quiet, efficient young lady called Eline Schol and you can find her at Ann Ritmeester’s dental clinic on Avenue de Tervuren – Tervurenlaan 94 on 02 734 01 43.

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If you have any questions, leave me a comment below and I’ll get back to you!