K law Real Estate Academy
On 13 June 2018, K law held its first Real Estate Academy at its new offices in Brussels with the purpose of providing clients with a clear overview of the various newly adopted and proposed regulations in private and public real estate law.
Gerald Van Walle, Real Estate Partner at K law, introduced the team and kicked off the private law section by providing some insights in the new draft legislation on co-property, which was recently approved on 7 June 2018.
Subsequently, Gerald and Hendrik Baumans summarized the proposed reform of the property law regulations in the civil code, pertaining to, among others, usufruct, leasehold and right of superficies.
Valerie Dhooghe elaborated schematically on the newly adopted residential lease regulations in the Brussels and the Walloon region as well as the proposed Flemish decree of 18 May 2018.
Jim Bauwens and Anneleen Vanderbauwhede of our Kortrijk office elaborated on the initiatives regarding commercial lease regulations in the Flemish and Walloon region, taking into consideration the new Flemish and Walloon decree and the proposed Brussels Decree of 12 July 2017 regarding pop-up commercial leases.
Jim concluded the first part of the seminar with an introduction to the Flemish integrated environmental permit for retail activities (“omgevingsvergunning voor kleinhandelsactiviteiten”) which will replace the socio-economical permit as of 1 August 2018.
The second part of the seminar focused on public real estate law changes. Katrien Kempe provided a general introduction on the Flemish “Codextrein” of 8 December 2017, the Flemish draft decree on environmental instruments of 12 January 2018 and the Flemish Building Passport (“Woningpas”) which should be available within a few months.
Thereafter, an overview of the latest updates in soil matters was presented to our audience: Anneleen explained the recent changes to the Flemish soil decree, Katrien highlighted the importance of the judgment issued by the Court of Cassation on 22 March 2018 and Valerie made the link with the new Walloon Soil Decree of 1 March 2018. To conclude the public real estate session, Katrien and Hendrik elaborated on the new enforcement system of the Flemish integrated environmental permit (“omgevingsvergunning”), which entered into force on 1 March 2018.
As a closing note: we would like to thank all the participants for joining this event and making it a success. Other K law Real Estate Academies will follow in the near future, taking into account the ever-evolving Belgian legal system. More information to follow soon …