Search Q&A
Short vs long term leasing of an apartment
We have a studio apartment (in our house) that we'd like to rent out for residential use. Is there a difference in terms of permits required and/or taxes to be paid on renting it long term vs short term? In this case by short term I mean renting to tourists or others for periods of less than one month, e.g. though Air BnB.
Where could I go for more information on this? Is there a particular offical website in Belgium on these issues?
You need to check with your commune planning department and make sure it is OK to do this. If planning permission does not exist for having 2 seperate properties at this address, then any prospective tenant will not be able to register themselves as living there, which effectively means you coul not rnt it out residentially.
They should also be able to tell you if it's possible to rent it out short term.
Tax wise, you would not pay anything other than the normal Précompte Immobilier if you rent it out unfurnished as a residence. If it's furnished, you need to pay income tax on the furnished part, and if it's a short term let, I think you need to pay tax on the lot, but your local commune tax department should be able to answer that better than I can.
My house has a separate studio apartment. As it happens we use it as part of the main house even though it has a separate front door but the previous house owner did rent it out.
My studio shares the water, electricity and heating supplies of the main house and there is a single RC, however the Commune treats the house and the studio as separate logements even though all building-based taxes are based on the ensemble. There is a bizare side-effect in that we have a separate waste-collection wheelie-bin for the studio which is never used and which costs us nothing because nobody lives in the studio, but which the Commune refuses to take back because "there are two logements".
So it can be possible. You need to take advice from a notaire as soon as possible, you will need a notaire to draw up the rental contracts anyway as it would be very inadvisable to use any of the standard contracts because of shared use issues.
