I think it is the architects and/or Caro
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Hi @reef-finance & @Lee
I confirm we managed to get an appointment with the notary - Mr Erneux - this upcoming Monday, 6th May at 8h30. Nextcloud invitation updated. We need to look at the questions to be asked, i will try to have a look at this whenever i have time. Most questions should be in the doc here
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Hi there!
I was wondering if the notary got a clear idea from his contact at matexi about why they were suing the landlord?
The document looks like it has been cleaned up so I don’t want to mess up with it, especially if we already have the answer…
Another thing : could we ask him if there is room for it is whether he has any advise for us on taking the insurance for the board (like a very specific cover that is not always offered or something like that…)
I have inserted notes in our Q&A doc
Ugne and Lie, please feel to accomplish especially on questions 9 and 13 which I believe we haven’t asked but am not 100% sure anymore 
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[note 21/05: post edited to correct for the typo in the 132 figure (so 125k, not 25k), as spotted by Richard in his reply below]
I have been calling the notary’s secretariat last week in an attempt to get more clarity on the issue of the registration fees, and on the legal set-up of the purchase. Yesterday he picked up the phone himself, and he took almost half an hour to go through the two points in detail. Here’s a short report … (ping @reef-finance)
Registration fees / droits de registrement
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Registration fee calculator: Calcul de frais d'acte d'achat - Notaire.be
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At the purchase we will pay about 132.000 euro (125 + 7) in registration fees and notary costs.
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When the people who bought the site will sell quote-parts to everybody else in The Reef, they can recover 36% of the 125.000 euro registration fees (i.e. 45.000 euro). This money will go back to the common budget. See also https://edgeryders.eu/t/buying-the-site-as-individuals-to-be-able-to-get-the-abattement/20039
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The people who are eligible for an abattement (i.e. those who will own only one property) will get an abattement on the part of the casco price that represents the price of the site. You can do a simulation using the calculator linked above. From what I can see this comes down to +/- 3000 euro if you are eligible.
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Taking all of this together, I believe that this means that the 150k that is currently foreseen in the budget for the registration fees is just about right or maybe a slight underestimation (but I’d be grateful if the number crunchers could confirm this).
Legal set-up of the purchase
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To be eligible for the 36% reduction on the registration fees (as set out above), the notary recommends that the people who will own more than one property (and thus won’t be eligible for the abattement in the second round) will buy the site in their name.
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Important note: once the offer has been duly signed, we are committed to the purchase, i.e. coughing up the full amount at the moment of the deed. This also means though that as long as we can get the money together, the group doesn’t need to be 100% complete when we sign the deed.
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To offer them guarantees that everybody will commit to paying their share, there will be the following:
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A “convention” (“contrat cadre”? I still don’t fully understand this part) that everybody will have to sign and which binds them to pay their share of the purchase price
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To make sure that we collect the money in time and nobody walks away just before it’s time, we’ll collect the money on the account of the société simple. How this will work from an accounting point of view was not discussed.
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Because these contracts are “sur mesure”, it takes the notary a couple of hours, for which he will charge us money. We therefore agreed that we will let him know on Thursday about the outcome from the vote, and that he will take it from there.
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Hello @Lee , thank you for this comprehensive summary! I’m a little lost where you get the 32k from, i.e. when typing 1 Mn in the calculator, I get 132k (registration + notary). Finally, if we recover 36% of 125k then this would result in 45k.
Having read this and also Lucia’s informative research piece, I believe it is not possible to state today how much total registration fees we’ll incur. In my reading, final registration fees (after the second round) are a function of: a) whether we get the permis within 2 years and manage to recover 36% of the first round, and b) how many buyers in the second round will enjoy an abbatement and how many will not (see table on the bottom of Lucia’s piece.
Thanks for spotting that Richard! It should indeed be 132k (125 + 7). I’ll correct it in the post to avoid further confusion.
I don’t think it is this uncertain:
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It is rather unlikely that we won’t get a permit within two years. If this would be the case, things would be going really badly.
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For the second round, because everybody’s quote-part will be lower than 100k, I would think that everybody who is eligible will need to pay about 3k. So if you would make the sum (132 - 45) + (22 people x 3k) you land more or less at the 150 that are currently included in the budget. The one caveat here would be for the people who are not eligible, who should budget for having to pay full registration fees (which would be about 10k).
Does that make sense?
@Lee /@reef-finance : why does this go back to the commons and doesn’t go to the individuals having a right to an abattement? My reasoning: people having a property will be ‘richer’ than those not having a property or having to sell their property to buy one, so it seems fair to me that this doesn’t go to the commons but maybe to people needing it the most. Or was this a decision taken ‘before my time’?
Do you have any more view on the risks for the few people buying the site at this point? I don’t see any, as there will be a convent/contrat with everybody that will bind them to paying their full share. Maybe the risk is in the part of the land that hasn’t been sold yet , so for the reeflings to come? (or will we buy the land fully with the full members at this moment and then everybody get reimbursed once more reeflings join?)
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One remark here : it it not more prudent to collect the money on the notary’s account, if he offers this possibility ?
You could also do that: it’s a choice. That said, the individuals who have a right to the abattement… get the abattement itself (zero registration rights on the units), so there is already an advantage for them, which is what the law intended.
No. We did not envision this situation back then.
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I would just add that the 36% can be recovered only from the resold value, so 45k seems an overestimation, because first round buyers will keep their lots. Then again, there will be less than 22 buyers in the second round, so I would say 150k seems a good ballpark figure.
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We’ll talk about it of course, but to me the most intuitive is that the registration rights incurred by the entire group (125 - 45 = 80) are a sum to be paid by the group. This abattement of 45k is linked to the first purchase, which does not distuinguish between people with one or two properties.
On the risks the notary didn’t want to give any further information. We’ll have to ask him at the next step.
Putting the money on the notary’s account may be an option, but he did suggest to put it on the account of the société simple. We’ll ask again.
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Good evening.
I have added the questions from the Registration fees note on to the “Questions to the notary”. I have put them in French so that it would be easier to pass them along to the notary.
I can translate them to English if necessary (they are in English in the original note).
ping @reef-finance
Lucia
We discussed this, but for the sake of documentation: I understand it differently.
First-instance buyers will buy an indivisé site, divide it into lots, and sell the lots to everyone, including themselves. They cannot “keep” lots, because, with division, the property changes nature. This means that all of the indivisé site gets resold. Hence the 36% rebate applies.
Hello Alberto,
I see what you mean.
However, from what I have read from the notes documenting the exchanges with the notary, there was nothing to make me think that the 1st buyers would be forced to buyback their share of the land to ensure a perfect “division” of property (sortie d’indivision).
Quite the contrary, my understanding when reading the exchanges with the notary would be that we (some of us in any case) can buy the land as a group, without precision of who own what piece of land and sell a share of our land to other members afterwards. I imagine this means we will all be in “indivision” for as far as the land is concerned.
I have tried to look up information on the scenario you are mentioning, but I have not found anything relevant. Maybe this : Acheter à plusieurs: division et indivision | Immobilier - Notaire.be , but it does not apply specifically to a plot of land intended for building several apartements.
Would you happen to have a source for your scenario ?
If your understanding is correct, the transaction costs would therefore be much higher. For the sake of simplicity, let’s assume the plot is divided equally between all households - 22 as the architects plan currently allow. This means,
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per household not benefiting from abattement:
45,5k € cost of land
Frais d’acte for the first sale (“indivision”)
[(125k * 66%)+6.500]/22=4.045
Frais d’acte for the second sale
45.5k * 12,5%+3.300=9.000
=> about 13.000€ in frais d’acte -
household benefiting from abattement:
45,5k cost of land
Frais d’acte for the first sale (“indivision”)
[(125k * 66%)+6.500]/22=4.045€
Frais d’acte for the second sale
3.300
=> about 7.500 in frais d’acte
We can expect the registrations costs to range from anywhere between 165.000 (unlikely as there will be at least one household not benefiting the registration costs, since somebody is making the first purchase) and 286.000 (should there be a problem with the construction and people not being able to have their address registered within 3 years of the sale at the apartment).
Lets suppose a ratio of 1 non-eligible to 2 eligible= > this would be about 205k€
@alberto
I spent some time looking up more details on the registrations fees.
I think this link explains it well :
- Where there is actually a sale, its 12,5% (droit de vente)
- When (and if) we have to make a division of the plot among all parties, the % is 1% (droit de partage).
FR : Les droits d'enregistrement - Bruxelles Fiscalité
NL : Registratierechten - Bruxelles Fiscalité
To be confirmed with the notary I suppose.
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Yes, figures. So, 1% of 1 million is 10K, which divided by about 20 families would be 500 EUR per family, which is well into the 10% marginality, so part of the statistical error.
My reading is he mentioned it in one of his earlier answers, see Q&A Nr. 4, “lorsqu’ils cèdent entre ceux qui étaient propriétaires lors de l’achat, c’est du 1%”.
Aha, so this would mean the sale of the lots to buyers of the indivisé. Got it.