Stand at the kitchen window on a Saturday morning and you'll hear nothing except the low wind moving through the fields of Meer and, somewhere further off, the bells of Sint-Katharinakerk drifting in from Hoogstraten's market square. That's the soundtrack this house runs on. No traffic, no neighbors on top of you, just 2,562 square meters of fully enclosed garden rolling out behind a broad-fronted farmhouse that's been quietly anchoring this corner of the Kempen countryside for decades.
This is a genuine Belgian long-façade farmhouse on Meerleseweg 47 in Meer — a small village that sits almost exactly on the line between Belgium and the Netherlands, five minutes south of the Dutch border crossing at Zundert. It's a location that repeatedly surprises people. You're forty minutes from Antwerp's old port, an hour from Brussels, and barely thirty minutes from Breda in the Dutch province of Noord-Brabant. Yet out here, it genuinely feels like the countryside has kept its deal with you.
The house covers 295 square meters and is in good, move-in ready condition. After roughly forty years with the same family, it carries the kind of lived-in solidity that newer builds just don't replicate. The proportions are right. Ceilings feel like ceilings. The 54-square-meter living room — one of the largest on the ground floor of any residential property in this price band in the area — centers on a pellet stove fireplace that turns a rainy October evening into something you'd actually look forward to. The big windows face the garden, and in winter, when the Flemish countryside goes pale and flat, the light that comes through them has a quality painters used to chase.
Walk through to the kitchen — a well-configured 17-square-meter corner layout with ceramic hob, integrated fridge-freezer, and extractor hood — and you're directly connected to the veranda, the first bathroom, and the double garage. That flow matters. Whoever designed this house understood how a rural property actually gets used: muddy boots from the garden, bikes to park, storage that doesn't fight with your living space. The indoor garage alone is 40 square meters, comfortably fitting two cars, and leads to a dedicated laundry room with a separate garden door. Practical, unglamorous, and exactly what you want.
The veranda deserves more attention than a quick mention. Running 7.4 meters along the back of the house and connecting via sliding doors to the garden, it functions as a genuine extra room from April through October. Breakfast out there in June, when the rose bushes along the back wall are in full flower and the garden is completely private behind its fencing, is one of those small daily pleasures that makes the whole investment make sense.
Upstairs, three bedrooms and a separate attic room of about 40 square meters that could become a fourth bedroom, a proper home studio, or a dedicated workspace for remote working. The smallest bedroom has its own staircase down — useful for teenagers, guests, or anyone who keeps different hours. Knee-wall storage on the upper floor means you're not losing space to awkward eaves. A second bathroom, recently renovated, has a walk-in shower and towel radiator. There's also a separate WC on the upper level, which anyone who's shared a single bathroom on holiday with four people will appreciate enormously.
Outside, the brick outbuilding at the far end of the plot currently serves as a storage shed, but it has the bones of a workshop, a home office, or a summer studio. The garden itself is fully fenced and genuinely spacious — room for a vegetable patch, a trampoline, a long table for outdoor dinners, and still enough lawn for the kids to get lost in.
Now, the area. Hoogstraten is one of the better-kept secrets in the Belgian Campine region, the Kempen. The town's market square, the Vrijheid, is lined with cafes and the unmistakable tower of the Sint-Katharinakerk, a Gothic church with a 97-meter spire you'll use as a navigation landmark for years. The Friday market runs weekly and is genuinely useful, not touristy — local strawberries from the polders around Meerle, Flemish cheese, bread from De Stokerij bakery, and regional asparagus in spring that the Belgians rightly make a whole seasonal event of.
Cycling is deeply embedded in daily life here. The LF Scheldefietsroute and the regional Kempense routes cut through the area, and within ten minutes on a bike you're on dedicated paths through heath and pine forests that connect all the way to the Kalmthoutse Heide nature reserve. In autumn, those heaths turn the color of rust and terracotta; in early spring, the fields between Meer and Meerle smell of wet earth and new growth. These are routes where you'll pass a handful of cars in an hour. Bring good tires and a flask of coffee.
For food, Hoogstraten punches well above its population size. Restaurant Sanseveria on the Vrijheid does serious Flemish-French cooking with a short, seasonal menu. The traditional eetcafé culture is alive and well here — local brown cafes serving stoofvlees met friet and a Trappist beer from Westmalle, which is barely thirty kilometers away and whose abbey beer is, without any argument, one of the finest ales in the world. Antwerp gives you access to anything you'd want from a major European food city — the fish market at Zuiderterras, the Vleminckveld street food strip, Michelin-starred tables in the old diamond quarter.
For international buyers specifically, Belgium's second-home market in the Kempen region is still attractively priced compared to coastal Flemish properties in De Panne or Knokke, and significantly cheaper than comparable rural properties in the Netherlands across the border. The region draws a steady interest from Dutch buyers — partly for lifestyle, partly because Belgian property prices remain more accessible. Energy label C, double glazing, roof insulation, and solar panels are already in place, which matters for Belgian real estate regulations and will matter increasingly for resale value as energy standards tighten across the EU.
For foreign purchasers: Belgian property transfer tax (registratierechten) for second homes currently runs at 12% in Flanders, and notary fees add roughly 1-2%. The process differs from Dutch, British, or German systems, but it is well-structured and professionally managed. Mortgage financing is available to EU residents and in many cases to non-EU buyers, subject to normal lending criteria.
Key features at a glance:
- 295 m² long-façade farmhouse in good, move-in ready condition
- 2,562 m² fully enclosed private garden with terrace and outbuilding
- 54 m² living room with pellet stove fireplace
- 3 bedrooms plus 40 m² attic room convertible to a 4th bedroom
- 2 bathrooms (one recently renovated with walk-in shower)
- 17 m² corner kitchen with direct veranda access
- 7.4-meter glazed veranda opening onto the garden
- 40 m² indoor double garage plus separate laundry room
- Solar panels, double glazing, roof insulation, energy label C
- Separate brick outbuilding for storage or conversion
- 5 minutes from the Dutch border (Zundert), 40 min from Antwerp
- Cycling routes to Kalmthoutse Heide nature reserve from the door
- Strong rental appeal and second-home potential in an undervalued Flemish market
- No odor nuisance confirmed by longtime owners despite adjacent farmland
This is a property that rewards people who'd rather have a real house in a real place than a renovation project with a view. It's substantial, private, and positioned in one of the quieter corners of northern Belgium — the kind of spot that feels discovered, not overexposed.
Reach out through Homestra to arrange a viewing or to request the full technical dossier. The sellers are motivated, the price is set at 698,000 euros, and properties of this footprint and condition in Meer and the wider Hoogstraten commune do not sit on the market long.
