In some cities such as Brussels, Uccle, Ixelles, international buyers are frequent customers of Belgian real estate agencies[i]. So let’s look at the top nationalities of buyers.

Who are the foreign buyers interested in Belgian real estate ?

The EU institutions employ about 40,000 people in Brussels. Naturally, this creates a big community of foreigners who, according to the Financial Times[ii] « set up home in the leafy suburban communes of Uccle or Woluwe-Saint-Pierre which are farther out yet closer to many of the international schools and some of the city’s best restaurants ».

With 29 international schools located in and around the city, it is quite obvious that foreigners and foreign buyers are extremely present and active.

Looking at the demographics, it appears that Brussels is home to 163 nationalities and over 65,000 foreigners[iii].

It gets even more interesting if you actually dig into the official statistics[iv]

As you can see on the map below representing the different neighborhoods of Brussels, there are over 44% of foreigners in many areas !

N.B. : « Part des étrangers dans la population » means proportion of foreigners in the total population.

Now, on a national level, Belgium counts over 1.25 million foreigners among a population of 11.2 million inhabitants,  which is more than 10% !

The top nationalities (French, Italians, Dutch, Moroccan, Polish, Romanian, Spanish, Portuguese, German and Turkish) are represented in the graph below :

How can foreign buyers find properties in Belgium ?

The leading Belgian property portals are Immoweb.be, ImmoVlan.be, and Logic-Immo.be. These three are only available in French, English and Flemmish versions.

Yet if you’re Italian, Polish, Romanian or Spanish, it is quite likely that the languages available on those leading portals don’t help.

This is why this week we will be in Brussels at a large real estate show to present ways to reach foreigners by listing properties on foreign portals via the ListGlobally network of property portals https://www.listglobally.com/publicnetwork , as well as through complementary online and offline strategies.

Sources:

[i] http://www.lesoir.be/993032/article/economie/immo/2015-09-18/acheteurs-etrangers-francais-debarquent-toujours-chez-nous-mais-leur-profil-chan

[ii] https://www.ft.com/content/c81f086a-d593-11e5-829b-8564e7528e54

[iii] https://www.bruxelles.be/artdet.cfm/4389

[iv] https://monitoringdesquartiers.brussels/maps/statistiques-population-bruxelles/nationalites-region-bruxelloise/part-des-etrangers/1/2014/