Once the seller accepts your written offer, the compromis (preliminary sale agreement) is usually signed within a few days to two or three weeks. The gap covers gathering the seller’s certificates and drafting the document. Acceptance of the offer itself already forms a binding agreement in Belgium.
The stretch between an accepted offer and the compromis is short but not empty. In Belgian law, the moment the seller accepts your written offer at the stated price, a sale agreement in principle already exists; the compromis then puts that agreement into a full, signed document. That is why buyers should treat an offer as a commitment, not a trial balloon.
In practice, the delay is driven by paperwork rather than negotiation. The seller must supply the PEB (Energy Performance Certificate), the electrical compliance certificate, the soil information from the Walloon database, the urban-planning extract from the commune and the cadastral information; for an apartment, the co-ownership documents too. Source: Notaire.be. When these are ready, the compromis can be drafted and signed, often within a few days to two or three weeks.
The counter-intuitive detail: a slower gap is sometimes the seller’s problem, not yours. If a certificate is missing or the planning extract is slow to arrive from the commune, the timeline waits on those, which is one reason an experienced agency chases the documents in parallel rather than in sequence.
Your Easyhome adviser coordinates with both notaries so nothing stalls, and once the compromis is signed the notarial deed follows within about four months.
At a glance
| Stage | Typical timing | Who acts |
|---|---|---|
| Written offer submitted | Day 0 | Buyer |
| Seller accepts (binding in principle) | Days to a week | Seller |
| Seller documents gathered (PEB, CE, soil, planning) | In parallel | Seller and notaries |
| Compromis drafted and signed | A few days to 2 to 3 weeks | Both parties |
| Notarial deed | About 4 months after compromis | Notary |