The year 2023 was a good year for the around 500 Luxembourg property owners in Knokke (B). This is particularly true for apartment owners. According to official information According to the Belgian notary association Fednot, the average value of their property increased by 20.9 percent last year and is now officially at 773,582 euros. This is an all-time high. The average price of an apartment in the municipality is now 2.5 times higher than the average price of an apartment on the entire Belgian coast (318,446 euros).
Not surprisingly, the owners of apartments along the dike promenade are among the big winners of this development on the Belgian real estate market. Your properties are now valued at an average of 1,436,333 euros. This represents an increase of 49.6 percent between 2022 and 2023.
This is also an exceptional situation that is not comparable to the other Belgian coastal communities. According to official data from Fednot, the average value of a “normal” apartment on “Belsch Plage” was 397,080 euros in 2023. The price difference between properties on the rest of the coast and in Knokke is therefore more than a million euros.
The increase in property prices in Knokke coincides with a decline in transactions for the second year in a row. Between 2022 and 2023, sales fell by 2.2 percent. The phenomenon affects practically all 14 coastal municipalities. However, a slowdown in price increases or even a price decline, as is the case elsewhere, has not yet been observed.
For Bart Van Opstal, spokesman for Fednot, the very special situation on the real estate market in Knokke can be explained primarily by the personal financial situation of the owners in the seaside town.
“Many sellers have paid off their loans or bought without credit,” he says in an interview “The standard”. “This means they are in no rush to sell” and that “their priority is to get a good price.” In other words, the scarcity of their real estate, combined with a financial strength that allows them to wait for the right offer, represents a counterweight to the classic law of supply and demand.
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Another possible explanation, which applies to the entire Belgian coast, is buyers’ demand for larger properties, which is directly linked to the retention and spread of teleworking. “If you want to combine a working day with a weekend on Monday or Friday, you’ll be happy with an additional room,” says Bart Van Opstal. This phenomenon could also play a role in Knokke in the future, as the appeal court in Ghent declared the municipality’s planned second home tax inadmissible last November.
In 2021 The new mayor wanted to “oblige the owners of apartments in the old building districts to move their residence there” in order to promote social mixing. However, in their ruling, the judges noted that “price pressure in the housing market is not solely due to the presence of second homes, but is influenced by numerous factors, including the attractive geographical location of the municipality, the importance of trade and business, additional municipal taxes (or lack thereof) and the infrastructure”.