Buying Guide

Comparing Luxembourg apartments when the floor plans are drawn to different standards

Two listings quoting the same surface can describe apartments of materially different size. Before any comparison is meaningful, the numbers have to be normalised, and the plan is the only document that cannot be shot on a wide-angle lens.

Normalise the surface first

Luxembourg listings mix total surface, habitable surface, terraces, balconies, cellars and parking lots in a single headline figure. A property advertised at 110 m² including a 15 m² terrace and a 10 m² cave is an 85 m² apartment, and a price per square metre calculated on the advertised number is wrong before the comparison begins.

Check the rooms drawn on the plan against the figure quoted. The authoritative description of a lot sits in the acte de base, which is worth requesting before an offer rather than reading at the deed, because it also defines what is private and what is common.

Then measure how much of the habitable surface is circulation. A long internal corridor serving four rooms can absorb eight or nine square metres that appear in the total and serve nobody, so two apartments of identical surface are not equivalent purchases.

Read the walls, because they set the limits

Drawn wall thickness separates structural elements from partitions, and for a buyer that is the map of what can be changed.

A partition is an interior job. A structural wall is not: in a copropriété under the amended law of 16 May 1975 the structure is a common part, private installation work is subject to a vote at the general assembly, and improvement works require an absolute majority of all millièmes, present or not.

So the open-plan layout you can imagine on the drive home is either a straightforward renovation or a proposal you will have to put to your neighbours, and establishing which before the offer changes what the property is worth to you.

Services, which decide the cost of any change

Look at where the kitchen and bathroom sit relative to each other and to the neighbouring lots. That tells you where the risers run.

Moving a bathroom away from an existing riser is among the most expensive interior changes available, because drainage needs fall and the fall has to go somewhere. Kitchen and bathroom back to back means concentrated services and lower alteration costs; at opposite ends means the reverse.

The same reading identifies acoustic risk. A bedroom sharing a wall with the water riser, or backing onto the lift shaft, will hear both. Confirm it in person by standing silently in the room for thirty seconds with the window closed.

The five measurements that decide whether it works

• Longest uninterrupted wall in each bedroom. A standard wardrobe needs about two metres, and a room with a door, a window and a radiator may have no such wall.
• Living room wall for seating, roughly 2.2 metres plus clearance. Count the doors opening into the room; each removes a wall.
• Door swings. Every door is drawn with its arc, and overlapping arcs are the most reliable early warning of an awkward room.
• Lift car and stairwell. Internal dimensions, the diagonal of the lift door, and the narrowest point of the stairs, which determine what furniture can arrive and whether a hoist and a commune permit are needed.
• Window head height and room depth. Useful daylight reaches roughly two to two and a half times the window head height into a room, so a deep room with a low head is dark at the far end regardless of orientation.

What no plan shows and must be asked

Ceiling height, which varies enormously in Luxembourg from around three metres in a nineteenth-century conversion to considerably less in a 1970s block, and which changes how a given area feels more than almost any other variable.

Orientation, which should be checked with a compass rather than accepted from an agent, together with what obstructs the sky. Where a facing building rises above roughly forty-five degrees from the window, a south-facing room on a low floor receives very little direct sun in a Luxembourg winter, when the sun stays low and sets before half past four in late December.

And the cave, whose size varies enormously and which no plan describes accurately. Ask to be taken to it rather than told it exists.

The building, which the plan cannot show at all

Two apartments with identical plans in different buildings are different purchases, because a buyer acquires a share of common parts expressed in millièmes and a set of collective obligations.

Ask for the minutes of the last three general assemblies, the reconciled charges for two completed years rather than the monthly provision, and the balance and annual contribution of the fonds de travaux, compulsory in every Luxembourg co-ownership since 1 August 2023, with a minimum set per square metre of energy reference surface and graded by the building's thermal insulation class.

A sheet that survives a week of viewings

Record the same fields for every property on the evening of the visit: normalised habitable surface, price and price per normalised square metre, reconciled charges, works fund balance and contribution, works voted and not yet called, energy class, floor and lift, orientation, longest bedroom wall, cave size, parking, and timed walking minutes to the nearest stop.

Then add your own acquisition figure calculated with your actual Bëllegen Akt position rather than a generic 7%, since the credit is a fixed €40,000 per buyer and €80,000 for a couple acquiring together, and absorbs the duties fully at some price levels and only partly at others.

Three questions we are asked

Are Luxembourg plans reliably to scale? Usually, but check for a scale bar or dimensions. A plan with neither is a diagram and should be treated as an indication of layout rather than a measurement you can furnish from.

Is a 3D visualisation useful? For layout only. Rendered furniture is routinely drawn undersized, which is why rooms in a render look more generous than the same rooms photographed.

What if no plan exists? Ask for the acte de base, which contains the lot description, and measure and sketch it yourself at the second viewing.

Where the plan stops and the deed begins

Two things a plan cannot settle and a buyer should establish before offering.

The first is what is private and what is common. A terrace or garden shown attached to a lot is frequently a right of exclusive enjoyment over common property rather than a private part, and that governs what may be planted, built or stored there. The acte de base is the authoritative document, not the drawing.

The second is whether any alteration you are counting on is achievable. Private installation work is subject to a vote at the general assembly, and improvement works require an absolute majority of all millièmes, present or not. Assemblies meet once a year, so a change requiring a vote carries a twelve-month lead time unless an extraordinary meeting is convened.

Both matter because an accepted offer in Luxembourg leads to a compromis de vente, which is a binding contract rather than a preliminary step. The plan is where a purchase should be interrogated, not where it should be imagined.