Belgian real estate no longer overpriced, says National Bank

After insisting for years that the Belgian housing market is exaggeratedly overvalued, the National Bank now maintains that the market is in fact in balance, reports De Standaard.

In 2012, Belgium’s National Bank announced that Belgian houses were overvalued by a whopping 15%. That is no longer the case, according to the National Bank’s latest annual report. The market is still overvalued, but only by about 3.6%, the report shows, which is “relatively stable”.

However, real estate prices have not gone down in Belgium since 2012, on the contrary. In the last three years, housing prices have gone up by about 4% on average. But in that same period, interest rates have also fallen sharply, from more than 4% to less than 2.5% on a 20-year loan. This makes buying a house more affordable.

Institutions that keep an eye on changes in the housing market, such as the National Bank, have also refined their methods of calculation.