More than 30,000 buildings, mainly homes, stood structurally empty in Flanders last year for the first time, despite the acute need for affordable housing.
According to an analysis by De Tijd of figures from the annual report of the agency Wonen in Vlaanderen, at least 30,807 buildings were vacant for at least a year in 2025.
That represents a 3.4 % increase compared with 2024. Compared with 2020, the figure is up by 38.5 %, or more than 8,500 additional empty properties.
It is the highest number recorded since the agency began collecting the data. The true level of vacancy in Flanders is likely to be higher. In the absence of a central database, however, the exact scale remains unclear.
Only municipalities that receive Flemish subsidies through an intermunicipal co-operation project for local housing policy are required to report the data. As a result, the report includes figures from 215 of Flanders’ 285 municipalities.
Wonen in Vlaanderen says the rise in vacancy figures is mainly due to improved registration by local authorities. But De Tijd claims it is impossible to verify whether that is the full explanation.
The registration and enforcement of vacancy policy are not carried out with the same rigour in every municipality, Pascal De Decker, emeritus professor of housing policy at KU Leuven, told the newspaper.
Experts are calling for a public register that would bring together all vacancy data across Flanders.
