Apartment Hunting

On August 1st we will leave our current corporate apartment and move to a new place. First, we had to find a new place so we spent an entire day apartment shopping. It was fun to see all different sorts of homes in several different neighborhoods. On the left is a refurbished house near our current apartment. It was beautiful but impractical given all the stairs which were narrow and winding. Not good for families with toddlers, but I'm sure many European families have this set up.
This is the garden from our second choice for a new place. Huge! But it would have meant lawn mowing, hedge trimming, etc. Too much work since we want to be out and about on weekends.


This is a front view of the house with the big garden - the right hand side of the duplex was for rent.

Some surprises about renting in Belgium - most people rent for 3, 6, or 9 years because home ownership is much less common. Our realtor had a hard time finding landlords who were willing to rent to us for one year. Most rentals do not come with extras - like light fixtures. When we did choose an apartment (pictures to follow) their agent heard us remarking about the lack of light fixtures and she persuaded the landlord to add some (hope we like them well enough!) without raising the rent.