u/be_data

Hi everyone,

While looking at properties myself, I found it difficult to answer a few practical questions:

• How does this asking price compare with real sales prices for similar homes in the same area?
• How do the areas I am considering compare on prices and affordability?
• Even if we could afford our "dream home", would it still be a sensible and sustainable purchase month to month?
• How have prices and sales activity in an area evolved in recent years?

I ended up building a small interactive explorer to help me compare those things more systematically.

It helped me put home listings we were interested in into context, compare them with local sale-price benchmarks, follow price and sales-volume trends, and translate a purchase price into a rough monthly loan cost and upfront cash requirement.

It covers Belgian areas from province to commune level, with benchmarks for different home types and price levels. Selecting an area also gives a short summary of its prices, affordability and recent trends, helping put it in context within Belgium.

You can also enter your own income, target price, available own funds, mortgage rate and term. The map and rankings then update across Belgium, with estimates of monthly repayment, mortgage burden and upfront cash required.

I put it online in case it is useful to others:

https://www.belgiumdata.com/en/belgium-home-affordability-explorer

Feedback is welcome, especially on anything unclear, missing, or misleading.

Hi everyone,

While looking at properties myself, I found it difficult to answer a few practical questions:

• How does this asking price compare with real sales prices for similar homes in the same area?
• How do the areas I am considering compare on prices and affordability?
• Even if we could afford our "dream home", would it still be a sensible and sustainable purchase month to month?
• How have prices and sales activity in an area evolved in recent years?

I ended up building a small interactive explorer to help me compare those things more systematically.

It helped me put home listings we were interested in into context, compare them with local sale-price benchmarks, follow price and sales-volume trends, and translate a purchase price into a rough monthly loan cost and upfront cash requirement.

It covers Belgian areas from province to commune level, with benchmarks for different home types and price levels. Selecting an area also gives a short summary of its prices, affordability and recent trends, helping put it in context within Belgium.

You can also enter your own income, target price, available own funds, mortgage rate and term. The map and rankings then update across Belgium, with estimates of monthly repayment, mortgage burden and upfront cash required.

I put it online in English, Dutch, French and German, in case it is useful to others as well:

https://www.belgiumdata.com/en/belgium-home-affordability-explorer

Note: area-level price and affordability comparisons use 2023 price data, aligned with the latest available income statistics. The personal purchase scenario uses 2025 price data.

https://preview.redd.it/96h7orfyv35h1.jpg?width=1200&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=efe7a02f7a5a7f63ccc49f4f780bed39fdee1d16

I recently applied for a mortgage loan and had to compare offers from different banks, each with slightly different conditions.

I wanted to quickly test things like:

• what a 0.2% rate difference changes
• borrowing more vs using more own funds
• different mortgage mandate amounts
• shorter vs longer loan periods
• how much cash is needed upfront
• comparing bank offers apples-to-apples when rates, borrowed amounts, insurance conditions, fees, taxes, and mandate structures differ

So I built a free mortgage planner + bank offer comparison tool:

https://www.belgiumdata.com/en/snapshots/belgium-mortgage-planner-bank-offer-comparison

It includes:

Mortgage planner

Enter a purchase price, income, interest rate, own funds, amount to borrow, loan duration, region, first/own residence status, and mortgage mandate amount.

It shows monthly repayment, mortgage burden, amount to borrow vs own funds, upfront project costs, deed/mandate cost breakdown, full project view, and a PDF report.

Bank offer comparison

Enter bank offers and compare them against your scenario or against another offer.

It compares borrowed amount, rate, term, mandate amount, monthly repayment, estimated TAEG, upfront cash needed, recurring/one-off costs, normalized monthly differences, and long-term cash impact, and it can generate a PDF comparison report.

Privacy: values stay in your browser by default. If you choose to share an offer, only anonymized offer values are submitted.

Any feedback is appreciated. I’m interested in anything that feels unclear, unrealistic, missing, or useful.

Thanks!