Documents for selling an apartment in Belgium: who provides what, and when

The notary has sent you a list. Ten lines, a few acronyms, and no indication of who holds what. You know the energy certificate is your job, you suspect the property manager (syndic) has his share, and you cannot see where to start.

The documents for selling an apartment in Belgium fall into three families, and that is the only simple way to look at them: what the syndic holds and must provide, what you order from an accredited professional, and what the authorities issue. Each family has its own deadline, and those deadlines do not add up if you start them on the same day. This page takes the file document by document: who issues it, when it must be ready, and how long it stays valid.

The six sets of information only the syndic holds

Before the contract, offer or promise to buy is signed, the buyer must have received a set of information about the co-ownership. The person who passes it on is the notary, the professional intermediary or you, the outgoing co-owner, and the syndic provides it on simple request within fifteen days (Art. 3.94, § 1, extract of the Civil Code circulated by the BIV/IPI). Six sets of information are covered:

• the amount of the working capital fundGlossaryTotal of the advances paid by the co-owners, as provision, to cover recurring expenditure such as heating and lighting of the common parts or management fees. It is held in a separate account in the association's name. See the glossary and of the reserve fund;
• any arrears of charges you owe, ordinary and extraordinary;
• the position of the calls for funds to the reserve fund decided before the fixed date of the transfer of ownership;
• a list of pending court proceedings and the amounts at stake;
• the minutes of the ordinary and extraordinary general meetings of the last three years, with the periodic service charge statements for the last two financial years;
• a copy of the latest approved balance sheet.

The fees the syndic charges for providing this information are yours to pay (Art. 3.94, § 4). The law does not set the amount: it usually appears in the syndic contract, among the additional services. Ask for it in writing at the same time as the file, rather than discovering it on the completion statement.

Two documents the buyer will almost always ask for are not on that list. The articlesGlossaryThe deed of division and the co-ownership regulations taken together. They must be drawn up by authentic (notarial) deed, as must any amendment to them, and transcribed to be enforceable against third parties. See the glossary of the building, that is the deed of division (acte de base / basisakte) and the co-ownership regulations, are in your own purchase deed: you already have them, at your notary's office. The house rules and the register of decisions, for their part, are kept at the registered office of the owners' association (VME/ACP), where any interested party may consult them on site and free of charge (Art. 3.93, §§ 3 and 4), and that includes a prospective buyer in the middle of negotiations. What these documents contain is explained in deed of division and co-ownership regulations.

Who issues what, and when?

Two validity periods are worth remembering, because they decide whether you need to budget for an expense. The EPC is valid for at most ten years, but for a sale it must have been drawn up from 2019 onwards, and the electrical inspection report for twenty-five years, but a new inspection becomes necessary after work on the installation (selling a house, Vlaanderen.be). If the report finds the installation non-compliant, the buyer in principle has eighteen months after completion to bring it up to standard, which is better negotiated into the price than discovered afterwards.

The documents that do not go through the co-ownership

The EPC is the document that shifts the most dates, because it must exist before the publicity and not just before signing. In Flanders the EPC must be available at the latest when the publicity first appears, and it must have been drawn up from 2019 onwards. The advert must show the energy label and the energy score, plus the full address or the unique code of the EPC. If the home has label E or worse, the advert must also state that a renovation obligation applies to the building, and the same goes for the preliminary agreement and the notarial deed. In Brussels the certificate is required for an individual dwelling of 18 m² or more, must be available from the moment the property is put up for sale, remains valid for ten years, and its energy class appears on the advert and the signs (the EPB certificate for a home, Brussels Environment). There, the owner must also give the valid certificate free of charge to anyone who responds to the advert. One point specific to apartments: the certificate covers your home, not the building. A poorly insulated common roof weighs on your result without you being able to replace it alone, and a well-stocked reserve fund does not improve your label. The works that do move it are covered in energy renovation and grants.

The electrical inspection applies to dwellings, so to apartments too, and is ordered from an accredited body that issues a report of compliance or of reasoned non-compliance. The post-intervention file, for its part, describes the works carried out since 1 May 2001: quotes, invoices, specifications, photos. For the private parts, it is up to you to put it together. For the common parts, the syndic keeps the building's post-intervention fileGlossaryFile compiled during building works that gathers the information relevant to safety and health for future work on the structure. Where applicable, the syndic must keep it in the manner laid down by Royal Decree. See the glossary (Art. 3.89, § 5, 10°), and it is worth asking for it in the same email as everything else.

The asbestos certificate deserves extra attention in an apartment building. When you sell a property in a building dating from before 2001, you must have an asbestos certificate for the private parts, and its content must be disclosed to the buyer when the preliminary agreement is signed. For the common parts, owners' associations have a general obligation to hold an asbestos certificate by 31 December 2026 at the latest; if that certificate already exists, you disclose its content to the prospective buyer when the agreement is concluded (asbestos certificate, Vlaanderen.be). The notary checks whether a valid certificate has been handed over. If it has not, the buyer can claim the sale is void. The standard validity of an asbestos certificate is ten years.

That leaves the administrative documents. The soil certificate is usually requested from OVAM by the seller's notary. The property information (vastgoedinlichtingen), which replaces the former urban planning information, is requested by you or through your notary on the Vastgoedinformatieplatform: it covers, among other things, permits, any planning breaches and pre-emption rights, and it must be no more than a year old at the time of sale.

Flanders or Brussels: what changes?

The co-ownership framework is federal, so it is the same in both regions. The technical certificates, however, are regional, and that is where the file diverges.

The penalties are not alike either. In Brussels, the lack of a certificate is first a criminal matter, and if the public prosecutor does not prosecute, the chief officer of Brussels Environment may impose an administrative fine of between 50 and 62,500 euros, with notaries required to report properties put up for sale without a certificate. For Flanders, your notary will confirm the consequences of a missing certificate.

Here is our reading. The size of a fine changes little in your timetable, because in both regions the missing document blocks the advert or the preliminary agreement before it costs anything. The real risk is not the fine, it is a sale pushed back by three weeks.

How long does it take to put the file together?

The deadlines are known, and each fits in one sentence. The syndic has fifteen days on simple request. The property information is requested through the platform and must be no more than a year old at the time of sale, which lets you order it early. The mortgage certificate takes twenty to thirty days, and a reply from the tax authorities twelve days. Between the preliminary agreement and the deed, the notarial profession allows four months at most (buying and financing brochure, notaris.be, in Dutch).

Laid end to end, these figures are daunting. Started on the same day, they fit into a month. So the advice is simple: write to the syndic, order the EPC, the electrical inspection and, if needed, the asbestos certificate, and request the property information on the same day, before the first viewing. That is the only decision of method that matters when selling a unit, and it costs nothing.

Two documents escape this logic because they depend on the building and not on you. The latest approved balance sheet does not exist if the annual meeting has been postponed, and no reminder will make it appear. The position of the calls for funds, likewise, is read from decisions already taken. Tell the buyer and his notary at the preliminary agreement, rather than letting a date be set that nobody can keep. The rest of the process, from splitting the charges to the final statement, is described in selling a unit in a co-ownership.

Handing over the file, and keeping proof of the handover

Passing on the documents is not a minor administrative gesture: it decides what binds the buyer. General meeting decisions taken before his right arose are enforceable against him as soon as they have been communicated to him, and that communication is the job of whoever transfers the unit to him (Art. 3.93, § 5). A file sent by email, dated, with the list of documents in the body of the message, is worth more than a USB stick handed over during a viewing.

Within thirty days of completion, the movement reverses: the notary informs the syndic of the date of the deed, the unit concerned and the identity of the parties (Art. 3.94, § 3). It is this notification that brings the buyer into the building's records, and from then on the steps gathered in becoming a new co-owner begin.

General information like this does not replace your notary's advice on your file, especially if the co-ownership has a pending dispute or a regional certificate is missing. What the buyer should look for in these same documents is set out in buying an apartment in a co-ownership, and the whole handover in buying and selling in a co-ownership.