Step out onto your 21-square-metre terrace on a Saturday morning, coffee in hand, and watch the light filter through the trees of the communal garden behind the building. No street noise from this side. Just birdsong, a soft breeze, and the quiet satisfaction of knowing that everything you need — the Saturday market on Market Square, the hiking trails of Bokrijk, the restaurant strip on Stiemerbeekvallei — is within minutes from your front door. This is what daily life looks like from Weg naar As 148 in Genk, and it's a far more compelling pitch than any brochure bullet point could deliver.
Built in 2018 and in excellent condition throughout, this ground-floor apartment sits in a well-managed residential building that still feels new. The lift means you're never hauling groceries up stairs. The underground garage means you never circle the block looking for parking on a rainy November evening. These sound like small things. They're not — they're the details that make the difference between a home you love and one you merely tolerate.
Inside, the layout is genuinely well thought out. The living room spans just over 22 square metres and opens directly into an open kitchen of 13 square metres — an induction hob, integrated oven, a proper kitchen island with sink and dishwasher, and enough cabinet storage that you won't be shuffling things around every time you cook. The whole space is open and light without feeling cavernous. On warm evenings, the large sliding doors fold back to connect the living area with the terrace, and suddenly the indoors and outdoors become one room. The communal garden beyond is lush and well-kept, the kind of green backdrop that cities rarely deliver at this price point.
The two bedrooms are sensibly sized — 9 and 12 square metres respectively — with tile flooring that's practical for the Belgian climate and TV and internet connections already in place. The bathroom is clean and modern: double washbasin, mirrored LED cabinets, a walk-in shower with full wall tiling. There's also a separate toilet, which anyone who's shared a single bathroom on a busy morning will immediately appreciate. A utility room off the entrance handles the washing machine and dryer connections, plus the electrical panel, keeping everything technical tucked out of sight. In the basement, your private storage room adds another 5.22 square metres of space — for bikes, skis, or the inevitable accumulation of life.
Speaking of bikes: Genk is genuinely one of the better Belgian cities for cycling. The Stiemervallei greenway runs right through the city and connects to a broader network of paved cycling routes through the Kempen region. In summer, you can ride from the apartment to the outdoor terraces along the Stiemerbeek within fifteen minutes, grab a Duvel or a plate of vol-au-vent, and feel completely removed from urban pace — even though you're technically in the middle of a city.
Genk has a cultural energy that often surprises visitors who expect an old Flemish market town and instead find C-mine, the former coal mine turned creative campus that now houses an art cinema, design studios, exhibition spaces, and one of the best theatres in the province. On weekends, C-mine fills up with locals and day-trippers from Hasselt and Maastricht. The Bokrijk Open-Air Museum, just a few kilometres east, is something else entirely — 500 hectares of reconstructed Flemish villages, craft demonstrations, and walking trails through actual countryside. It's the kind of place you visit once as a tourist and then keep coming back to across the seasons, because it looks completely different in October fog versus June sunshine.
Food in Genk reflects the city's multicultural character in ways that are genuinely exciting. The Italian community here is one of the oldest in Belgium — descendants of miners who arrived in the 1950s — and their culinary influence is woven into the fabric of the city. Authentic pasta, excellent espresso, family-run trattorias that have been open for decades. You'll also find Turkish bakeries, excellent Lebanese restaurants, and Indonesian spots that trace back to another wave of arrivals. It's not fusion for fusion's sake; it's the real accumulated food culture of a city that has absorbed the world and made it its own.
Practically speaking, Genk is extremely well connected. The E314 motorway puts Hasselt fifteen minutes away and Leuven under an hour. Brussels is reachable in under ninety minutes by car. Maastricht in the Netherlands is closer still — roughly 35 kilometres — making cross-border weekend trips genuinely easy. Liège Airport handles a handful of European routes, and Brussels Airport is around 70 kilometres for longer-haul travel.
For international buyers considering this as a Belgian second home or holiday base, the EPC rating of A is worth highlighting not just for environmental reasons but for financial ones. Energy costs in Belgium have been volatile in recent years, and an A-rated apartment insulates you from the worst of that — lower monthly charges, more predictable running costs. The cadastral income of €1,005 is the figure used to calculate Belgian property taxes, and at this level the annual charges remain very manageable.
Key features at a glance:
- 91 m² ground-floor apartment built in 2018, in excellent condition
- 2 bedrooms (9.14 m² and 12.04 m²) with TV and internet connections
- Open-plan living and kitchen area totalling approximately 35 m²
- Fully equipped kitchen with induction hob, oven, island, and dishwasher
- Modern bathroom with double washbasin, LED mirror cabinets, and walk-in shower
- Separate toilet with washbasin
- Private terrace of 21.46 m² overlooking communal garden
- Private underground parking space (No. 5) included
- Private basement storage room (5.22 m²) plus in-apartment utility room
- Communal bicycle storage in the building
- EPC rating A — among the most energy-efficient classifications available
- Lift access in the building
- No flood risk, all permits in place, no pre-emption rights
- Immediate occupancy on signing of deed
- Priced at €349,000
This apartment is available now, with no chain and no complications. If you're looking for a manageable, well-located second home in Belgium that you can lock up and leave between visits without worry, or a base for exploring the wider Flemish region and the Dutch and German border areas beyond, this is the kind of property that earns its keep year-round.
Reach out to the Homestra team today to arrange a viewing or to request the full technical documentation. Properties at this condition and price point in central Genk don't tend to sit on the market for long — and once you've stood on that terrace with the garden in front of you, you'll understand exactly why.
