Would you like to know the final price of a property in Luxembourg by simply navigating an interactive map? This level of transparency remains impossible in Luxembourg, claims LSAP MP Franz Fayot. This despite similar services existing in other European countries.
France is for example leading the way in terms of transparency since last spring. Sale price data, which previously only the state and real estate agencies had access to, are now freely available to the general public. Buyers and sellers can check the prices of any homes that were sold in the last five years. A website gathers all the sale price data and an interactive map allows the user to view the exact prices for each sold property.
Fayot also cited the United Kingdom as another example of a country that makes sale price data freely available since 1995. This level of transparency, Fayot explained, allows "potential buyers to act more wisely, which is in the best interest of the layman facing real estate agents."
In short: transparency remains an issue in the Grand Duchy. Luxembourg's Housing Observatory only publishes a property prince range per municipality. Fayot also stressed that this price range was merely "indicative and does not correspond to an expert report." The MP asked Minister for Housing Sam Tanson if she was considering making sale price data public.
Tanson replied that it was not currently planned to adopt a similar tool like France. However, she specified that the Housing Observatory would rework its statistics in order to make them more intelligible and refine the displayed price ranges.
Tanson also explained that it's difficult to achieve absolute transparency because the real estate data that are gathered have a fiscal rather than statistical purpose. For this reason, the "statistical exploitation" of real estate data in Luxembourg remains "relatively complex" and poses "legal limitations." A new legal basis would have to be created first.
Tanson stressed that several initiatives "allowed to improve transparency on Luxembourg real estate market" in the last couple of years. The Housing Observatory for example offers detailed statistics about the sale prices of apartments based on notarial deeds. In 2015, they also published an info-sheet on the price of building land in the Grand Duchy. In 2013, Statec also created an index of sale prices of old houses.
The minister concluded that the Housing Observatory continues to work on improving transparency in years to come.
