Hi all, I am planning to move to Luxembourg and I have been looking at properties to rent.

What I saw was increadibly expensive apartments and cheap looking condos for upwards of 2500 eur OR 900-1500 eur per month houses not located in LUX city but in the countryside.

Are these prices normal for a house per month? If so why are people willing to live in a hole for twice as much instead of commuting that 2-2.5 hours a day and living in a nice house?

Is live in the rural parts that bad or I am missing something?

I am talking about places like this : [https://www.immoweb.be/en/classified/house/for-rent/messancy/6780/10016294](https://www.immoweb.be/en/classified/house/for-rent/messancy/6780/10016294)

10 comments

  1. Pay attention about the country. Messancy is in Belgium. Different tax rules apply, you need to check that up closely.
    Prices/rents generally drop even inside Luxembourg with the distance to Luxembourg-City same as commuting time do increase.

  2. 3 hours of commuting is 62 hours of “work” which makes your country house more “expensive” than your hole in Luxembourg.

  3. No house in the world will make me sit 4 hours daily in the car wrecking my wallet and my mental health. That is lunacy to me. imagine, 2 hours there 2 hours back EVERY DAY. 20 years down the line I want to be able to say that I spent that time wisely hanging out with my friends / working out / pursuing my hobbies instead of “boy im so glad I sat in traffic for so much time to save some money.

  5. Because your time on this earth is finite and a lot of people feel time is more valuable than money. The time you spend commuting is time you will never get back.

  6. I agree with you, that makes sense. However there are more variables at play besides commute and cost of housing like tax codes, WFH laws etc. Everyone will have their own reasons, there is no right or wrong answer. for example if I was in my 20s I wouldn’t have minded to live in a dirt cheap apartment in Arlon or thionville or whatever. But if you are in your 30s, with a family etc I don’t think I would trade time I could otherwise spend with my family commuting just to save a buck. My opinion. Each to their own.

  7. You can definitely find relatively cheap places in desolate parts of the North where no one goes after night, or (as your example shows) in Belgium or Germany or France

  8. The travel times you’re looking are also often not the rush hour travel times, which can as much as double your commute, depending on where you live and work. For instance anyone living in France, commuting by car, and working in the center or Kirchberg is going to hate their entire life.

    WFH rules can also be quite different if you have a job that can be done WFH. For instance where I work if you live in Luxembourg then it’s 1 day a week in theory but in practice up to the line manager, but for people living in other countries it needs to be exactly reported, due to potential international tax issues, and less than 1 day/week. I forget how much, like 32 days/yr in Belgium? The laws keep changing and I didn’t keep track.

    There are also dumb things like if you take an 8 am work call from your house in Germany and come into work at 10, then that still counts as an entire “WFH” day for tax concerns. Officially anyway, obviously that would be hard to audit and even harder to enforce.

  9. You probably don’t want to check places outside LU, but even without going hard with hours commuting, you would save decent money just by renting/buying in places like Esch Sur Alzette, literally 25 mins train to Luxembourg and often perceived as distant as Nicaragua by some here. And yes, Esch is not exactly Manhattan but nor is Lux City.

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