Mortgage rates in Belgium at their lowest for almost two years

Anyone looking to buy property in Belgium this autumn will be pleased to know that mortgage rates have decreased to just over 3%.

According to the financial advice service Immotheker Finotheker’s mortgage rate barometer, which compares thousands of loans granted in Belgium every day, the average rate for borrowing €250,000 over 20 years in 2024 is now 3.05%.

The last time a rate this low was seen was in October 2022, following a huge jump in mortgage rates after the Covid-19 pandemic. The peak level was reached in November 2023, with an average of 3.73%.

Today’s new rate of about 3% means that in practice, borrowing the same amount of €250,000, there is almost €15,000 less interest to pay on a loan taken out this year, than for one taken out in 2023.

This sum is “not negligible,” Laurent Mathy, manager of Waremme estate agents Immocube told RTBF.

He added that since August, the market had been more dynamic with more work for estate agents and many more sales. One potential buyer, Jean-Yves Tombeur, looking for a two-bedroom property and a garage, told RTBF that now was “a good time to buy”.

Sylvain Bavary, spokesperson for the Brussels-based professional association of notaries Fednot (Fédération du notariat) said the mortgage rate decrease was very good for consumers.

Another piece of good news for buyers in Wallonia is that from January 2025 the level of registration rights (droits d’enregistrement) to be paid on a property will fall from 12.5% to 3%.

The decrease in mortgage interest rates is due both to lower rates on Belgium’s long-term bonds and also to increased competition between the country’s banks.

According to the European Union’s statistical office, Luxembourg-based Eurostat, Belgian banking institutions offer some of the lowest mortgage rates in the EU.

According to statistics portal Statista, in the last quarter of 2023, Spain, Belgium and France had the lowest rates. Poland, Hungary and Romania are the countries with the highest – at around 7%.

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of savings accounts. A November 2023 report by the Paris and Lille-based IESEG School of Management, found that the average savings rate in Belgium in September 2023 was just 0.55%, beneath the average rate in Germany (0.59%), the Netherlands (1.32%), France (2.41%), and Luxembourg (3.33%). Norway and Ireland are other European countries with higher rates.