In our last Team Building meeting we’ve talked about the option of employing the services of someone in the real estate market to help us find a site. The main idea behind this is: being helped by a professional with knowledge of the housing market in Brussels (especially when it comes to large surface area sites, old industrial areas or empty sites) can heighten our chances of finding a site that fits our needs faster. There’s a lot more to discuss and research when it comes to this idea, but before I write up a proposal to bring to a plenary and discuss there, I wanted to ask the following question: are we already in contact with a real estate agent or agency in Brussels that can help us or will help us find a site?
I’m aware of contacts within non-profits like Com’onhome, but not of contacts within the commercial real estate market. Thank you in advance for your input, I’ll use it when writing up this proposal
As mentioned in one of the Team Building posts, I indeed contacted a property hunter a couple of weeks ago, but I didn’t receive a reply yet. I can try to call them on Monday and let you know.
A quick note though: while I am absolutely in favour of hiring a professional, I am not sure I am keen to already do this from the start. The reasons for this being these:
Cutting a map into pieces and searching together is a method that has been proven succesful, so in theory there should be no reason why it shouldn’t work for us.
The scouting exercise to me is important in terms of feeling safe to do this together. The fact that we would manage to organise ourselves and dedicate the time that it requires to me is a reality check that we will also be able to do that once we need to build. Or framed differently: I would feel less secure to purchase a site together with people who have not had to work quite a bit to find the site, because then I won’t know whether they’ll put in that same amount of work once we start building.
I expect that working with a property hunter would raise the price of the site with 2%, which could be acceptable I guess. The point is however that they ask for exclusivity, so even when we find a site ourselves, we would still need to pay the 2% fee. That’s why I would prefer to try it out for 6 months or so ourselves, and then use a property hunter as a fallback option.
@JolanWuyts, this also came up in this week’s plenary, brough up by @MariaClaudia . What I suggest is to gather information by contacting Mark immediately, and ask for his input. Does he have any experience with property hunters? What are the arguments for using one, or not? Does he know anyone that could be a good fit for us?
How to contact Mark: I suggest an email with a written question, probably from the common mail address. He reads Dutch, French and English, prefers to write and speak in Dutch or French. Then, if in that exchange you agree that this merits a meeting (possibly a Zoom one), you schedule one. Again, speed is more important than precision when gathering information (as opposed to making an actual decision).
Just a quick reminder that we have agreed to the same “keyholder” set-up for Mark as we have for the architects (Jolan) and the notary (somebody in Team Building). For Mark for the moment it’s me, in my capacity of coordinator.
Sending emails to me works just as well from personal addresses as long as The Reef is in cc.
On this one I’m not going to stand in the way, but I think I already know the answer, so I would be cautious to overspend time (and thus money) on it.
Reply: I have no experience with that, and I strongly believe in the power of a group to do this in self-management. It’s also a good phase to do this together as a group.
