Homes in Luxembourg are bigger, more energy efficient and a lot more expensive

The high cost of housing in Luxembourg strongly influences the types of properties available, with apartments more common than houses compared to areas across the border, according to new data from the housing ministry.

The survey, published on Friday by the Housing Observatory (Observatoire de l’habitat) compared the housing stock last year in the Grand Duchy to parts of neighbouring Lorraine in France, Wallonia in Belgium, and Saarland and Rhineland-Palatinate in Germany.

More than 60% of advertisements in Luxembourg were for flats, in stark contrast to border areas in France and Belgium.

“Conversely, in the border areas, houses account for more than 60% of the properties offered for sale, which reflects the structure of the housing stock in the study area in Wallonia and Lorraine, where houses account for 74% and 55% of the housing stock respectively,” the study said.

In the German part of the study area, on the other hand, houses only accounted for 44% of the stock in Rhineland-Palatinate and 38% in Saarland.

Housing is cheapest in Wallonia

The advertised prices per square metre in Luxembourg were on average almost three times as high as in the neighbouring regions.

In the German border regions of Rhineland-Palatinate and Saarland, a square metre of living space was pricier than in French Lorraine or Belgian Wallonia, but still less than half as expensive as in Luxembourg. Houses for sale in Wallonia had the lowest average price per square metre.

Source: Note 43 de l’Observatoire de l’habitat.

In Lorraine, almost half of the homes for sale had a surface area of 70 square metres or less, while larger homes, classified as properties over 90 square metres, were relatively rare.

In Wallonia, Rhineland-Palatinate and Saarland, on the other hand, around half of the advertisements concerned flats with an area of between 70 and 90 square metres. In the Grand Duchy, only 33% of advertisements for sale related to flats with an area of 70 square metres or less.

In the case of houses, large properties of over 130 square metres dominate the supply in Wallonia, Rhineland-Palatinate, Saarland and, above all, in Luxembourg with a share of 91%. In Lorraine, on the other hand, only 41% of houses for sale exceed this threshold.

As far as the energy efficiency of a home is concerned, however, “due to different definitions […] an international comparison is only possible to a limited extent,” according to the study. Furthermore, the rating is not systematically stated in property advertisements.

In Lorraine just under 1% of flats for sale were in low-energy classes, compared to almost 50% of flat in Wallonia and 52% in Luxembourg. In the case of houses, the best energy efficiency classes account for 11% of advertisements in Lorraine, 8% in Wallonia and 59% in Luxembourg.

(This article was originally published by the Luxemburger Wort. Machine translated, with editing and adaptation by Alex Stevensson.)