Stand at the veranda window on a Saturday morning in October and you'll understand exactly why people have been putting down roots in Borgloon for centuries. The garden below is deep and wide, the apple and pear orchards that define this corner of Belgian Haspengouw are turning gold across the road, and the only sound cutting through the quiet is a distant tractor working the fields behind Martinusstraat. It's the kind of stillness that city people spend years chasing.
This 1918 detached house at number 21 is the real thing — a solid, generous family property on a 988-square-metre plot that has been holding its ground on one of Borgloon's quieter residential streets for over a hundred years. Five bedrooms spread across two floors, a basement, an attic with real expansion headroom, and a ground floor that was built for proper living: two reception rooms, a separate kitchen, a dining room, a laundry room, a storage room, and a veranda that opens directly onto the garden. At 216 square metres of living space, this is not a weekend cottage. It's a home that could hold four generations comfortably.
The condition is good. The bones are honest. Double-glazed wooden window frames throughout, 16 solar panels already installed on the roof — which means the official EPC label of E, issued before the panels went on, no longer tells the full story of how this house actually performs on your energy bill. The oil-fired heating system works. The structure is sound. What the house invites, rather than demands, is your vision for the interior: the freedom to take 216 square metres of well-proportioned rooms and decide for yourself what a home should feel like in 2025.
The ground-floor layout deserves a closer look. The larger of the two living rooms runs to nearly 30 square metres — enough for a proper sitting area and a reading corner with the books you only get to open on holiday. The second reception room at just under 20 square metres works naturally as a dining room, a study, or a playroom depending on the season and who's visiting. The veranda, over 20 square metres of bright glass-enclosed space looking out over the garden, is the kind of room that Belgians use eleven months of the year — morning coffee in February, lunch with friends in June, a glass of Péket on a warm September evening. The basement adds another 19 square metres, cool and dry, genuinely useful for wine storage or the kind of equipment that accumulates around outdoor living.
Upstairs, five bedrooms ranging from roughly 10 to 14 square metres each. Compact but not cramped, and crucially, five of them — which is rare at this price in this region. The bathroom, at over 15 square metres, is larger than most developers would build today and has the floor space to become something genuinely good with the right renovation budget. The attic sits above it all, currently open for storage, but with the ceiling height and footprint to convert into an additional room if the planning application supports it.
Outside, the 988-square-metre plot wraps around the house with room for a proper kitchen garden, a terrace, and space that children or grandchildren can actually run in. There's an outbuilding on the land — practical and solid, usable as a workshop, a bike store, or a garden studio. The plot is zoned residential with a rural character, sits outside any flood risk designation, and carries no heritage protection status, which matters for renovation planning.
Now, about Borgloon itself. This is the fruit-growing capital of Belgium — not a marketing tagline, it's literally the designation used by the regional tourism authority. In spring, the blossom routes through Haspengouw draw visitors from across Europe, with the Krieken en Bloesem route cycling straight through orchards that have been in production since the 12th century. Local farm shops along the Tongersesteenweg sell pressed juices, artisanal jams, and fruit spirits made from the same trees you can see from Martinusstraat. The Jenevermuseum in nearby Hasselt, 20 kilometres north on the E313, documents Belgium's gin heritage in a way that's genuinely interesting rather than touristy.
Tongeren, 12 kilometres south, is Belgium's oldest city. The Sunday antiques market on the Veemarkt — running every week for decades — is one of the largest outdoor antique markets in Europe and a serious reason to set your alarm early. The Roman walls, the Gallo-Roman Museum, the Onze-Lieve-Vrouwebasiliek: Tongeren packs an extraordinary amount of history into a small city that most international visitors haven't discovered yet.
Cycling is the primary sport here, and the network around Borgloon is exceptional. The Limburg cycling node system connects Martinusstraat to hundreds of kilometres of marked routes across rolling Haspengouw farmland, through orchards, past Cistercian abbeys, and along the Jeker river valley. In summer the routes are busy with Belgian families; in shoulder season you'll often have the trails largely to yourself. Sint-Truiden, 15 kilometres west, hosts a weekly market and has a good selection of cafés and restaurants along the Grote Markt that stay lively through the weekend.
For international buyers considering this as a holiday home or second residence in Belgium, the practical picture is solid. Brussels Airport is 75 kilometres by the E40 and E313 — under an hour in clear traffic. Maastricht Airport in the Netherlands is 35 kilometres and handles several European routes. The TGV connection from Liège, 30 kilometres east, puts Paris within two hours. The Belgian property purchase process is well-established for foreign buyers: a notary handles the transaction, the purchase tax (registration rights) applies at the standard regional rate, and there's no restriction on international ownership.
The cadastral income of €371 (non-indexed) is the basis for Belgian property tax calculations and gives a sense of the running costs, which are modest for a property of this size. The electrical installation is noted as non-conforming with current standards and will need upgrading — standard practice in a renovation of this age, and the kind of update that should be factored into a realistic budget from the start. No as-built certificate is required, and there's no pre-emptive right affecting this plot.
At €274,000 for 216 square metres on 988 square metres of land in a region that is quietly becoming one of the most talked-about rural destinations in the Benelux, the pricing reflects the renovation potential rather than a finished product — and that's where the opportunity sits for a buyer with clear ideas about how they want to live.
Key features at a glance:
- 5 bedrooms across the first floor, ranging from 10 to 14 square metres each
- 216 m² total living area over ground floor, first floor, basement and attic
- 988 m² private garden plot with outbuilding
- Veranda (20.44 m²) with direct garden access and natural light
- Two ground-floor reception rooms (19.76 m² and 29.68 m²)
- Large bathroom (15.14 m²) with renovation potential
- 16 solar panels installed — better real-world energy performance than EPC label suggests
- Double-glazed wooden window frames throughout
- Dry basement (19.72 m²), suitable for wine storage or workshop use
- Attic with expansion or conversion potential
- Outbuilding on plot for storage, studio or workshop use
- Zoned residential with rural character, outside flood risk zones
- 12 km from Tongeren's Roman city centre and weekly antique market
- 20 km from Hasselt, 75 km from Brussels Airport
- Cadastral income €371 (non-indexed), no pre-emptive right
This is the kind of property that rewards buyers who can see past the current state of the interiors to what 216 square metres and nearly 1,000 square metres of garden in the Belgian countryside can actually become. If you're looking for a second home in Belgium that gives you space, quiet, a serious garden, and easy access to some of the most underrated countryside in Northern Europe, Martinusstraat 21 is worth the drive. Get in touch with the team at Homestra to arrange a viewing — the orchard season is short, and the house shows best when the fruit trees behind the garden are doing what they do from March onwards.
