Brussels questions

[themotherofallmums]

Brussels MNetters,

We've been on here before to seek your advice about life in Brussels...well good news, we got the job so we're moving there later this summer. After so much dreaming and 'what ifs', we're looking forward to actually doing it now!

can i ask for your advice on a few more points:

1. House - our DC is registered with Joli Bois and Jean 23 Parmentier schools, so we are focusing our house hunt primarily on the WSP area. There isn't much on Immoweb at the moment (why?) so if anyone hears of a 3/4 bed house, with garden, for about 1300 euro (after haggling) please let us know! Work is north side of Parc de Woluwe on the 39 tram line.

1. Schools - apart from what we've already learnt about these 2 schools on this website, if anyone has any other information or up-to-date news that might help us choose between them come the new term, please let us know!

1. Mobile phone - how easy is it to get a mobile phone when you first arrive? We won't have one and will need it for house-hunting. Just a pay-as-you-go type, nothing fancy. Any tips?

1. Any advice for which bank to use, we're tending towards ING just because it's one we've heard of. We'd like to open account before we arrive. Mostly do our banking online and ATMs.

I'm sure we'll have lots more questions in the run-up to our move, thanks very much for now.

MoAL.

1300 in that are with 4 beds is very hard to find, 1700 and you'll get a choice. For 3 beds, much easier. But you may have to really compromise your ideals to get a house at that price. Even in supposedly cheaper areas of Brussels, you'll find that price hard too.

This 3 bed has been on the market for a while, near Joli-Bois school, so you should be able to negotiate down. Not sure if that really is a grass garden in the photo though.
www.immoweb.be/en/Rent.Estate.cfm?IdBien=3528929&xgallery=gallery&xpage=1#onglet

This house is way over-priced, looks like it is in "vieux joli-bois" a cité-jardin from the 1920s or 1930s. You can walk to Joli-Bois school in minutes, walk to 44 tram to work. The downside is you are on limits of WSP and need to travel a bit further to shops in Stockel, upside is you're really near the forest and it's peacful down there. I'd say it should rent for 1200-1300.
www.immoweb.be/en/Rent.estate.cfm?idbien=3572650&ongletactif=2&jpgnameinp=3572650_9.jpg&xincludedetail=2&xgallery=gallery&mycurrent_section=Rent&xbg=N#ongletphoto

This one another mum on mumsnet saw recently, on a road which can get busy at rush hour, but really near to all facilities, but not to Joli-Bois or Parmentiers schools - you'd have to take the bus there, 3 schools nearer which might have places. You might be able to negotiate down the rent to 1400 here, but no futher. The house will rent quickly, due to price and location, it's a very good price.
www.immoweb.be/en/Rent.estate.cfm?idbien=3572650&ongletactif=2&jpgnameinp=3572650_9.jpg&xincludedetail=2&xgallery=gallery&mycurrent_section=Rent&xbg=N#ongletphoto

Choose the school according to distance / time to get there. Consider other schools if you can't find a house near these schools in budget.

Mobile phone sims PAYG are available at all supermarkets, take you 10 minutes to buy one. If you want a contract, then do research before choosing.

Choose a bank that has a branch / ATM near where you are going to live. Cheapest bank for charges is however ARGENTA. ING possibly most expense for charges.

I'd be very interested in this house actually, although some of the decor looks rather unusual, it's a lovely quiet area, 5 minutes to de Burbure tram stop, 10 mins to Stockel tram/metro, so a commute to work can be done in 20 minutes. It's 5 minutes ot Institut St Georges, 10 minutes to école communale de Stockel, Ecole du SC de Stockel, école ND de la Trinité and without doubt one of these 4 schools will have places. Ahornbomenlaan 3 , 1970.

www.immoweb.be/en/Rent.Estate.cfm?IdBien=3663234&xgallery=gallery&xpage=1

Thanks for the quick reply Natation.

Did you mean to post a link to the same house? When I click on them, it comes up with the same one.

We only want 3 beds, I put 4 beds because sometimes you do see 4 beds for 1400/1500 and assumed you might be able to negotiate down a bit.

Sorry 3rd house in Stockel should be this one which is on Avenue Reine Astrid 436, 1950. 1500 euro. It's not 1150 as in the advert.
www.immoweb.be/en/Rent.Estate.cfm?IdBien=3627960&xgallery=gallery&xpage=1

Hi there themotherofallmums. Have you done any phoning around for houses yet? You're right that there's not much on the market in you price range, much more at a higher price, I can only assume your price range is moving faster because people have less money in their pocket so they go for the cheaper houses.

The price of the house on Avenue Reine Astrid 436, 1950 has been put down again to ?1400 on the advert. If the usable floor space is really 150m2 as stated, then any house in WSP which is in good condition and is less than ?10 per m2 is pretty good value for that house, 1400 / 150m2 = ?9.33 per m2. If you were interested in this house, bearing in mind the road can get busy in rush hour and you will be under the flight path of the airport several days a month (so are we and it doesn't bother us but it does some people) and finally the heating is oil and not gas, well i think the house is excellent value for a fully renovated house in the centre of arguably the most popular area of Brussels with expats. I don't think you could negotiate the price down to ?1300, as it is already an excellent price, but 1350 perhaps?

The other house on Ahornbomenlaan 3, 1970 which is 500m further out from the centre of Stockel and the Reine Astrid house is on paper even better value for size. 1350 / 183m2 = ?7.38 per m2. The first questions I'd ask here is about the heating system and if there is double glazing, because the house is detached. Do not underestimate the cost of heating a house here. We have a 150m2 terrace house with 50m2 garage on top. The first year's bill for heating appears to always be an estimate, we've put ours at ?190 a month and hope the real bill will come in at ?160 a month - but it's been a long winter and only just turned off the heating and we usually do that in March, we are also very frugal with temperature and never have heating on 24 hours. If this house is single glazed and has an old heating system, you could be looking at ?300 a month for heating + lighting, if not more.

The plus side of both these houses is you are in 1950 Kraainem and 1970 Wezembeek-Oppem post codes, they are "facility" French communes in Dutch Vlaams Brabant. This opens up the possibility of the 4 French schools in these 2 communes, children from Brussels and the rest of Vlaams Brabant are not allowed to attend them, the downside is if you ever move outside these post codes, you must remove your children from the schools. The nearest of the 4 schools to these houses is Institut St Georges, a small school with about 200 children in it.

PS sorry last piece of advice. When looking at houses here, try not and base your expectations on your experiences of houses from your home country. Houses here often have very small kitchens and much bigger combined living-dining rooms, gardens might be smaller than you are used to, too many houses here have single glazing (this is one thing I'd try and avoid at least), nice efficient heating/hot water systems like combi boilers seem to be in short supply, wooden or tiled floors are the norm, bathrooms often have 2 sinks in them, toilets often have NO sink next to them! It might be too idealistic to look for your perfect house. Good luck. If you need any help looking for housing in the area of east Brussels/Vlaams Brabant, I'm more than happy to help.

Natation seems to have the housing covered. Agree about the Sim cards, they sell a range at all the supermarket checkouts. Your UK phone might need to be unlocked - a phone shop will do this - or you can buy a cheapy one for 20 euros in the supermarket.

We are with ING - they are very expat friendly. We opened our account on line/phone before we moved. They also gave a us a "green account" for our house deposit - basically you don't need to put in real money - you pay an annual fee for the facility - about 50 euros. When we arrived in Brussels, we had one appointment to set up all the insurances etc. Be aware that if you going to employ anyone to work in your home eg a cleaner, you need to insure them too. This is a small supplement to your house insurance.

You can buy "titres services" for household help - cheques for paying for cleaners, ironing services etc, which you can offset against tax.

Thanks for your replies Natation and Portofino, very useful info to look out for. Especially the points about heating, floor space, double glazing etc.

I think we'll go for ING too.

Interestingly, the Kraainem house has now been reduced to 1350, just in the last 20 mins since I've been online!! So even better value for money now. I am sure it'll be snapped up. We arrive in a few weeks and we feel we have to wait to go house-hunting in person, so... c'est la vie - if it goes, it goes, but if not then we'll go see it. But we're going to fix up appointments for when we get there.

I just wanted to ask about living in Kraainem. We come from a francophone background as we've lived in French speaking countries in the past and DC speaks French, hence looking to continue that in Brussels. I understand being in a "facility" commune, you can request that official council docs are sent to you in French, so that wouldn't be a problem. But living in Kraainem, speaking English as mother tongue, a bit of French (but wanting to improve), but no Dutch whatsoever, does this hinder you at all in going about your daily business there? Or would you not notice a difference from 'over the border' in WSP etc??

Also, living in Kraainem, would that prevent us from sending DC to school in WSP commune? Presumably you aren't allowed?

Kraainem is very french in my opinion. I doubt you would notice much of a difference as all the Brussels communes are officially bilingual. If you live in Kraainem, you can apply to the french schools there and in Wezembeek I believe, plus any of the Brussels schools. We live in Zaventem (totally Dutch) but dd goes to a french speaking school in Brussels.

I have a couple of friends with dc at Ecole Diabolo in Kraainem and they seem quite happy with it. Also we have a spreadsheet and a private FB group for the Belgian MNetters - 46 members I think to date - so if you would like to get added, send me a PM with your email address....

Kraainem and Wezembeek-Oppem are roughly 80% French speaking among the Belgian population of the commune - Vlaams Brabant is divided into 2 parts : Leuven arrondissement and Hal-Viloorde arrondissement. The latter arrondissement is all around the periphery of Brussels region and contains the 6 communes "a facilités" among 35 communes (gemeenten). It's very controversial as about 30% speak French as a first language and 70% Dutch amongst this officially Dutch area. Only those French speakers in the 6 facility communes have their own French language schools. You find this same pattern all along the language border, on both sides of the border... here's a bit of geeky link to facility communes. Anyway, I've been twice to the maison communale in Kraainem, the staff there both times have been happy to speak English as well as French. I live in WSP and it's the same there, in fact they'll speak anything at WSP maison communale, I've heard Spanish too there. You'll only encounter any hostility towards speaking English or French at the communes in the rest of Vlaams Brabant like Overijse and Hoielaart which are squeezed between French Brabant Wallon and bilingual Brussels and that' mainly at official level where the commune employees are banned from speaking anything other than Dutch.
fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facilit%C3%A9s_linguistiques

You can send your child to any public school in Belgium EXCEPT for minority language schools in the facility communes, where you must be a resident of that commune and officially declared a native speaker of that minority language, or if in one of the 6 Brussels periphery facility communes, you can send to any of the minority French schools in any of the 6 communes. The central and south parts of Kraainem (that Stockel house is in the central part) are nearer to the 3 Wezembeek-Oppem French schools, La Fermette, de la Trinité and St Georges, the north part of Kraainem is where you'll find Diabolo school. Some bits of central and southern Kraainem are nearer WSP even. Don't worry you are not French speakers if you apply to the French schools, the head teachers are complicit in accepting non French speakers and declaring them French!! La Fermette school must be very close to 50% foreigners in its maternelle, it's a real anglophone mecca, all native French speaking anglophones of course.

I wouldn't hang around and wait to contact landlords and estate agents about housing though. The owner of that Stockel house speaks English too and she must be keen to get the place rented since the price has gone down 150 euro. I'd be making appointments for 2 or 3 weeks time now, or at least making enquiries.

Oh I wouldn't just go with ING because they do their documents in English. BNP Fortis Paribas do them in English too and still I wouldn't go with them just for that reason. You might find Argenta or Dexia do English too. And all the banks will offer you the "loan of security deposit" in lieu of cash for a fee. If you can spare 2 months rent, it's cheaper to deposit the cash in a blocked account which is fee free and your money gains interest, if you don't have the cash, then the "loan of security deposit" is obviously a better option. At the end of the day, you may end up losing some or all of this deposit, as landlords seem in general to think this is THEIRS to squander when you leave. I think it's the worst thing about renting, fighting over the "damages" when you leave a place.

Oh another thing, plenty of choice for day time French or Dutch courses, even more choice for evening ones. For public courses, some are even free, or you might pay at most 200 euro a year.