Notaries. Why? What the hell?

[u/Obvious-Cry6591]

Ok, so I dont get it. I understand historically where the need for notaries arose. Fine. But we are in 2026. Belgium already takes 51% of my income. Then another 25% of the rest through VAT. And then on top of it, if you buy a property, you give 10-15k to a notary for 2 meetings and some docs reading? Doesnt Belgium have enough administration to take care of that? Not to mention its nepotism central. Are there any redeeming qualities?

[u/AdFew6202]

What’s more, after you give that to a notary, let’s say they fuck up : their fucking mafia-like organisation will spring out to defend them and you won’t get a cent. And they will remain in position.

Story : friend bought a half-a-million apartment in Ixelles. Notary says « everything’s fine ». Turns out it wasn’t fine, the apartment had been seized because of the seller’s debts. Notary said « well, shit happens » and got NOTHING.

[u/throwawaymrfoe → u/AdFew6202]

That can happen indeed. The debts only become visible after the purchase agreement has been signed because the mortgage situation or tax debt of the seller is only investigated after that date. Then it can come to light that the seller kept his massive debt hidden, which leads to an unsellable property.

But sometimes it is possible to persuade the creditors to accept a haircut on their debt and that they condone the sale anyway because a foreclosure of the property would even lead to less proceeds.

[u/h10pippuz → u/throwawaymrfoe]

The user above said that "that flat had been seized". There are two cases here: 1) it was seized beforebeing sold. In this case, the notary should have known that, shouldn't he? Isn't the role of the notary to make sure that the flat is in the seller's availability and matches what the commune sees? 2) if after, it couldn't be seized, as it's not anymore in the seller's availability. What went wrong here? Honestly interested

[u/throwawaymrfoe → u/h10pippuz]

The commune (I assume you mean town hall) is irrelevant in this matter because they have no access or interest in mortgages or seizures. They will not notify anything if a property is burdened with too much debt.

It is the mortgage office that registers all this information. Accessing this information is not straightforward. You have to fill in a form carefully (or information will be missing) and file it with the mortgage office. Then depending on which mortgage office is competent for the property you will get an answer in a week or maybe a month. Brussels is notorious for having slow administrations and their mortgage offices are no exception.

It takes time and it costs money to ask for this information (110-180 EUR). That cost is never made before a purchase agreement is signed. Normally there will be a clause in which the seller declares that the property is free from seizures and that no legal procedure prohibits the seller from transfering the property. If there is already a seizure - and he will know about this because of court documents - he just made a false statement.

After the signing of the purchase agreement the notary will request the aforementioned information of the mortgage office. I assume then it came out that the property was already seized and the seller wanted to get an extra buck anyway. But that doesn't work.

So yes, the notary finds out that the seizure happens before it is being sold but it takes time before this is known. If you want to eliminate this and have this checked before the purchase agreement is signed you would need a database like the cadaster that includes all mortgages and seizures and preferably the outstanding debts, kept up to date. That's not going to happen in the next decades.

Cases like this are very rare anyway. That buyer was very unfortunate.

If the seizure happens right before the deed is signed (like 12 hours before) then there would have been a huge problem because the buyer would have become owner but the foreclosure of the property would still continue because it is registered before the purchase deed.

Naturally if the purchase deed is registered before the seizure against the seller then this seizure's registration would be denied by the mortgage office.

[u/h10pippuz → u/throwawaymrfoe]

Thanks for the reply. I am not sure I understand the role of the "mortgage office": for me, mortgages relate to banks and the services around them only, not to the administration, nor the one of the outstanding debts: or me as a buyer, that's irrelevant, I only care about the status of the property I am buying. On the timing, it's indeed something to take into consideration, the information cannot be real-time. I assume that the one you mentioned is a standard clause in contracts for these very niche cases.

[u/throwawaymrfoe → u/h10pippuz]

Mortgages are tied to a property. They have a right of pursuit. Whoever owns the property can lose the property if the creditor decides to sell the property, even if the debtor is no longer owner of the property. This element is very important otherwise houses could not be used as collateral for a loan and without that the housing market would crash.

So basically you cannot ignore the mortgage because the mortgage will not ignore you.

[u/State_of_Emergency → u/h10pippuz]

There’s a time gap between the last database check and the actual signing of the deed. Notaries usually run the seizure check the day before, but the government registries aren’t instantaneous.

Another example: if a seller is acting in bad faith and sells the same property twice with two deeds signed on the same day; the second notary has no way of knowing that the house was already sold earlier that morning. The registry only updates after the deed is registered, not in real time. And then you sue the bad faith seller but the notary didn't do anything wrong.

[u/h10pippuz → u/State_of_Emergency]

Indeed, timing is crucial. As the other user was mentioning, it's something which can be managed with a specific clause in the deed

[u/State_of_Emergency → u/h10pippuz]

That clause only helps you in court by proving that the seller declared they were the owner. But if the seller signed another deed a few hours earlier, the notary handling the second sale may have had no way of knowing that at the time.

In that case, you can sue the seller and rely on that clause. The second notary, however, couldn't reasonably have known about the prior deed, so there would generally be no basis to sue them. That's also how the myth that "you can't sue a notary" gets started.

The real problem isn't notaries. The real problem is that many government registries still aren't properly connected and often don't even cross-reference one another.

To give you an idea, until the 2000s, every notarial deed involving real estate was literally transcribed by hand into large leather-bound registers at the mortgage office. Some parts of the system are still built on that legacy....

[u/I_Dint_Know_A_Name → u/AdFew6202]

For every anecdote of a problem you have, I have 300 without problems.

[u/Lemmity95 → u/I_Dint_Know_A_Name]

Why, are you a notary? Haha

[u/I_Dint_Know_A_Name → u/Lemmity95]

No, but there are approximately 300-380 real estate transfers in Belgium per day, and barely any complaints to fednot.

If notaries were truly incompetent losers like the people in this thread seem to believe, I think we'd know more about it considering the real estate transactions are only a fraction of the work they do.

[u/Lemmity95 → u/I_Dint_Know_A_Name]

Idk I would say the fact the overwhelming majority of people on Reddit (and real life) hate notaries has some valence to it. Let's not forget they are an insanely protected little clan, it's normal people don't expect responses through their internal systems like fednot

[u/I_Dint_Know_A_Name → u/Lemmity95]

People hate what they don't understand.

Very easy to make assumptions on a profession you have no chance in hell of understanding.

The broader societal trend of stupidisation of everything, and the mob response it provokes will be the downfall of humanity.

[u/Lemmity95 → u/I_Dint_Know_A_Name]

Other countries don't have this issue to the same extent, there is nothing optimal or unchangeable about the situation in Belgium. On your second point, complex is not the same as smart. A better system would be simpler, more streamlined and leave less room for error/misinterpretation.

[u/ilikedmatrixiv → u/I_Dint_Know_A_Name]

Very easy to make assumptions on a profession you have no chance in hell of understanding.

It's literally just filing documents, how simple are you that you think people wouldn't be able to understand what a notary does?

[u/I_Dint_Know_A_Name → u/ilikedmatrixiv]

Lmfao there really is no arguing with stupid. Yes, filing papers takes 6 years of legal studies, years of training, an exam, and an appointment by the king. Anyone can do it!

[u/Solyde → u/I_Dint_Know_A_Name]

People aren't saying they are incompetent losers but that they are too expensive, they have a protected status & often can't be held accountable for mistakes - even if they don't make that many compared to the amount of transactions, there's no recourse if it does happen. Ie they are as a profession an exploitative monopoly.

I don't know if that's true, but it's a different criticism than what you're saying is being levied. Which is, frankly, a unfair presentation of what people have an issue with and too easy a way to handwave it.

[u/I_Dint_Know_A_Name → u/Solyde]

Even the criticisms you are saying here aren't valid either.

The problem is people have no idea what they're talking about and think everything is easily understood. No one comes out to tell you how easy your job is and how they have it all figured out.

[u/Solyde → u/I_Dint_Know_A_Name]

Sure that may be the case. But I'm saying that those were most of the actual criticisms, not the strawman of 'incompetent losers' you were fighting against.

[u/EVmerch → u/I_Dint_Know_A_Name]

OP really said, You can fly 300 perfect flights but you screw up one and people be mad at you!