Indeed. It's quite hard to make a profit from selling your own home in Belgium unless you have lived there for a long time. However, it appears that these extra costs are what prevents the Belgian housing market from inflating the way it does in the UK or US, eventually resulting in lower costs for both renters and buyers. A three bedroom house in a desirable suburb of Brussels costs less than a 50 sq m one-bedroom flat in an undesirable area of London.

Yup transaction costs are outrageous in Belgium. I blame it on the continued 19th century practice of upper crust families parking their more dimwitted members in civil law notary positions, guaranteeing them a respectable income without giving them the ability to cause too much harm. Seats for those offices are still getting hawked around today (expensive to claim one!).

All kidding aside, yes, the high transaction costs are a real break on speculation in the housing market there.

Ouch that does sound like a lot of money!

I do recall that in the two Finnish places I bought my offer also had a penalty clause - if I pulled out for any reason other than "failure to find financing" I had to pay €6,000 or so.

(I wouldn't have made an offer had I not intended to follow-through, but it was still a little scary to imagine having to pay out!)

In NL that is 10% of the purchase price, and gets hold in escrow. That works out well, the sellers are most likely making a similar commitment buying their new house.

That's crazy, in Australia conveyancing is pretty competitive, there are fixed price packages for something like $800 to $1200...

Most contracts here do have a 10% deposit, but they're usually conditional on finance, building inspections etc. so you have two weeks or so to pull out before it goes unconditional.