One in eight Flemish municipalities has more flats than houses

37 out of 300 Flemish municipalities currently have more flats than terraced or (semi-) detached houses, which is a doubling since 2014. That shows an analysis by Flemish newspaper De Tijd, based on the latest figures from the Belgian statistical office Statbel.

About 36,000 new homes were added across Flanders last year. Three-quarters of these are flats. The number of terraced, semi-detached and detached houses barely rose. Flats now account for 30 per cent of all homes in Flanders, making them the most important type of home. In the province of Antwerp, that market share is as high as 37 per cent.

Ten years ago, detached houses still constituted the norm in Flanders, accounting for 30 per cent of all homes. Only at the coast and in the main cities of Antwerp, Leuven and Hasselt were flats predominant. Today, those proportions are more or less reversed.

The countryside too does not escape this trend. Today, only 10 per cent of homes there are flats, but the advance there is proportionally much faster than in the suburbs and main cities.

^{#FlandersNewsService | Flats in Molenbeek, Brussels © BELGA PHOTO BELGIAN_FREELANCE}