From lawyer to fund builder: Julie De Bruyn on professional letting in Belgium

An estimated 90 to 95 percent of Belgian rental homes are still owned by private individuals with one or two flats. But a new kind of player is gaining ground: professional funds that own hundreds of homes and manage them themselves.

Julie De Bruyn knows all about it. She started out as a lawyer at DLA Piper, moved to Cushman & Wakefield and is now a partner at Buysse & Partners. There she built the residential fund Smart Living from a blank sheet to 22 buildings and some 600 let homes. This year the team raised more than 100 million euros for a second fund.

In Bakstenen en Boterhammen (Bricks and Sandwiches) she talks about her career switch, quality over volume, the differences between Brussels and Antwerp, and why she would advise her own children to rent.

From IT lawyer to real estate

Julie spent six years as an IT lawyer, mostly for large US tech companies. It was the period when privacy and data protection were taking off in Europe, and her firm was among the pioneers, down to lobbying the European institutions.

Still, two things chafed. Almost all contact happened on conference calls, and she noticed she enjoyed pitching to clients more than the legal work that followed. When she became a mother for the first time, she took career coaching. The conclusion: a commercial role would suit her better.

She chose real estate because to her it is the people business par excellence. At Cushman & Wakefield she quickly built a network and saw what it could yield. Her regulatory background still helps: to her, rules are a framework to do business within, not a reason to curse.

Smart Living: quality over volume

In early 2021 Julie was asked to launch a new residential rental fund. There was nothing: no capital, no property, no team. Entrepreneurship, then, but within the safety net of an existing company.

The ambition was 1,000 flats in three to four years. Today there are some 600, worth 200 million euros in property value. That is a deliberate choice. The 1,000 would have been achievable, but only with compromises on location and quality, and the team was not willing to make them.

Two choices made the difference:

• Buying existing buildings, not just new builds. A building with tenants immediately delivers data and experience. Every purchase sharpened the acquisition policy further.
• Judging quality from the resident's point of view. The fund focuses on affordable housing in growing neighbourhoods, not prime locations. The team passed on large housing blocks from the 1960s and 70s: even after a full renovation, they don't reach a modern standard for daylight and ceiling height.

According to Julie, those old blocks are a major social problem. Their ownership is often fragmented across co-owners, and residents rarely have the means to help pay for making them sustainable.

Brussels or Antwerp?

Smart Living invests in Brussels and Antwerp, the two largest rental markets. Not in the city centres, but in districts such as Anderlecht, Schaerbeek and Molenbeek. People who don't live there tend to think of problem areas. Julie mostly sees strong communities of tenants who want to stay and benefit from well-maintained buildings.

In 2021 Brussels seemed the logical choice: the capital, the European institutions, plenty of jobs and constant rental demand. That picture shifted around mid-2025, when the Brussels government intervened in the rental market. According to Julie, other countries show that rent regulation doesn't create affordable supply; it shrinks supply and drives prices up.

Flanders, by contrast, opts for cooperation, with incentives and subsidies for professional landlords. So today her preference goes to Antwerp.

Why professional letting pays off

In the Netherlands and Germany a handful of players together own hundreds of thousands of homes. Belgium is fragmented. Julie sees an advantage in that too: private owners are less sensitive to interest rate rises, so tenants are better protected against shocks. A bigger role for professional players is a good thing in her view; dominance like in neighbouring countries is not.

What sets them apart from the private landlord?

• It's their job. For a private owner, letting is something for evenings or weekends. At Smart Living an in-house team handles management, without outsourcing.
• Less emotion. Private landlords often don't dare to index their rent for fear the tenant will leave. Julie sees that tenants do accept indexation, as long as the service is right.
• Data instead of gut feeling. Benchmarking rents against the market, still letting an empty parking space: small measures that together make the return.

The result: a gross return in double digits, and just under 10 percent net. Not rocket science, Julie says, but discipline with every purchase and a critical eye on every euro.

Bricks in the belly: buy or rent?

For Julie, property remains a solid foundation for any wealth: it holds its value and rises steadily. But that doesn't always have to be a flat of your own. She once had one herself, and sold it fairly quickly.

The rules for private landlords are getting stricter, with renovation and sustainability requirements and more tax pressure. According to a recent KBC survey, almost half of private owners are considering selling. There are alternatives: listed property companies, or a property fund, which to her is the middle way.

And her own children? She would advise them to rent. In Flanders prices rise by about 2 percent a year. The real question is what else you could do with that money, such as investing in ETFs. More and more people in their twenties are already making that trade-off.

Data, AI and people

Julie uses intuition for the big picture: vision, strategy, people. The day-to-day decisions at Smart Living are based on data. Without a central, clean dataset you get nowhere with AI, she says. That's why the team first invested in that foundation, and then quickly became an early adopter of AI, with internal champions passing on the knowledge. Analysing and forecasting a building before buying it has never been faster.

FixForm plays a part in that. Tenant requests used to come in by email, WhatsApp, phone or simply at the door. Today they arrive in one place, are dispatched by theme with AI and end up with the right person. That lets the team make informed decisions: is this a cost for the tenant or the landlord, and is the tenant up to date with payments?

Even so, housing remains a basic right and property a people business. Smart Living doesn't put a chatbot between itself and its tenants. It automates the recurring tasks to free up time for real human contact.

Five quick statements

• Lawyer or investor: where did you learn the most about real estate? As an investor.
• Within ten years, half of Antwerp's residents will rent from a professional landlord. Disagree, that will take longer.
• The Belgian rental market in one word? Scarcity.
• Which building would you have demolished tomorrow? No single building, but the large apartment blocks along our coastline.
• A tenant with a complaint or an investor with a question: who do you call first? Both should get an answer just as quickly.

Managing requests and maintenance smartly?

Smart Living channels all tenant requests through FixForm, freeing up time for what really matters: the tenant. Do you manage a portfolio of rental homes and wonder what that could mean for yours? Get in touch.