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A success story for Belgian CEPI member association IPI: estate agents access the cadastral register online

Every year, close to a million extracts from the cadastral register are printed in Belgium, but estate agents have not had access to the obligatory data from the cadastral register via the internet. This will change, because after the notaries, it is the estate agent profession which will have, in Belgium, the possibility to obtain these documents online. The computer application has been created, authorisations delivered.

Last year 896,911 documents were requested from the cadastral register, a large majority of them by estate agents. A tedious task and a great waste of time, which is now over! Each estate agent will soon receive direct access to the cadastral register. The system is ready and authorisations have been obtained.

According to Luc Mahon, president of the IPI, “the agents are delighted at this modernisation, but we must keep our feet on the ground. We have personal access to the data of the cadastral register, we can print it and at a more attractive rate than that which applied up until now. That is very good. But, for reasons of confidentiality amongst others, certain temporary restrictions have been imposed. Equally we cannot use this facility for exploration. The Commission for the Protection of Privacy has told us to expect limitations to that effect.”

This has been a long drawn out and complicated process. Since 2007, the IPI has had to deal one by one with every legal problem which arose, taking into account the comments of the Commission for the Protection of Privacy, which has been very prudent on this dossier.

The new agreement means that the profession is modernising and becoming more and more credible. The electronic access to the cadastral register which has been conferred on estate agents via the IPI is a measure of confidence in the sector by the public authorities, which were at first hesitant. For the public authorities, electronic access to administrative administration is also a real expression of a desire for administrative simplification.

In concrete terms this means no more applications to the local authority; queues and useless documents, the stress of administrative delays, from now on, in a few clicks, estate agents will have access via their computer to the platform “CADASTREfinder” and therefore to the documents which are indispensable to the assignments they are working on.

This online service allows them to no longer depend on the goodwill of the local authority or cadastral register and to have access at any time to the documents which estate agents need, namely the extracts from the cadastral register and the plans. Each fruitful search for an extract of the cadastral register will cost 6 euros, whilst the accompanying plan will be delivered free. The documents received are not official documents but copies. In any event, this service will allow the needs of clients to be satisfied more quickly in the future.

View the video which illustrates the story on the IPI homepage
For more information on this subject please contact the IPI (Institut Professionnel de l’Immobilier): Jurgen Vansteene, Director Legal Department | Steven Lee, Director Communication & Training, by phone +32 2505 38 50 or email contact@ipi.be.