Soil certificate when selling your home: when, how and what it costs

In Flanders, a soil certificate is mandatory when you sell a home. Without that document you cannot have the sales agreement signed, and a buyer can even have the sale annulled afterwards. Yet many sellers only hear that the certificate exists once they are sitting with the notary. Below you can read what the certificate covers, when you need it, how to request it and what changes if your plot is registered as a risk site.

What exactly is a soil certificate?

A soil certificate is an extract from the land information register held by OVAM, the Flemish public waste agency. It sets out what the authorities know about the soil of a cadastral plot: has a risk activity ever been carried out there, is a file open, has a soil survey already taken place, was remediation imposed.

Note what the certificate is not. It is not an inspection and not a sampling exercise. Nobody comes round to drill or measure. OVAM simply returns what the register holds at that moment. For most ordinary homes the certificate therefore states that no data is available on soil quality. That is a normal outcome, not a defect in your property.

Every cadastral plot has its own certificate. If you sell a house together with an adjoining piece of garden or a garage that sits on a separate plot, you need several certificates. For an apartment it concerns the plot the building stands on.

When do you need the certificate during the sales process?

The rule is clear: the content of the soil certificate must be communicated to the buyer before the agreement is concluded. In practice that means before the sales agreement is signed, not only at the notarial deed. The content of the certificate is then also included in the sales agreement and in the deed.

If that does not happen, you risk more than a reprimand. A buyer can invoke the nullity of the transfer for as long as the deed has not been executed. A discussion like that costs you weeks, and sometimes the buyer as well.

Practical advice: request the certificate at the moment you put your home on the market, not when there is an offer on the table. For an ordinary plot that is a formality of a few days, and you avoid a smooth sale stalling over a document of a few dozen euros. If you work with an estate agent, the agency usually takes this on for you. Compare a few agents in your municipality without obligation and ask straight away who arranges which certificates.

How do you request a soil certificate and what does it cost?

You can request the certificate yourself from OVAM through the online counter. In most files your notary or your estate agent does it in your name. What you need for that:

• the cadastral details of the plot: division, section and plot number, which you find on a cadastral extract or on your property tax assessment;
• the identity of the owner or of the applicant acting in your name;
• one application per plot, even if the plots lie next to each other.

The standard rate is around sixty euros per cadastral plot. OVAM publishes the current rates, so check the amount at the time of your application. For an ordinary plot, delivery often follows within a few working days to two weeks. The legal deadline is wider, and for a risk site the handling takes longer.

If you also want a view of your price alongside the paperwork, request a free valuation of your home before you plan the first viewings.

Your plot is registered as a risk site: what now?

A plot is a risk site when a risk activity from the VLAREBO list is or was carried out there. Think of a former garage with a service pit, a workshop, a dry cleaner, a filling station, or an underground heating oil tank above a certain capacity. Activities from decades ago count as well.

If your land is registered that way, you as the seller must have an exploratory soil survey carried out by a recognised soil remediation expert before the transfer. That survey is at your expense. Reckon on a few weeks of lead time and on a cost that depends heavily on the number of borings and analyses. If the survey finds no contamination, the sale can simply go ahead. If a problem does emerge, a descriptive soil survey follows and possibly a remediation obligation.

Start on that early. A sale that only has to wait for a soil survey after the offer loses months and negotiating power. An agent who has handled this kind of file before schedules the survey in parallel with the listing of the property.

And if you sell in Brussels or Wallonia?

The OVAM soil certificate applies to Flanders only. The other regions have their own system with the same starting point: the buyer must know before signing what the authorities know about the soil.

In the Brussels Capital Region, Brussels Environment issues a soil certificate per plot, based on the soil state inventory. In Wallonia you request an extract from the soil state database, the BDES, from the competent department of the Walloon Region. Rates, deadlines and the consequences of an inventoried plot differ from region to region, so have your notary confirm which document your file needs.

What an estate agent takes on here

The soil certificate is one of the documents that make a sales file complete, alongside the EPC, the electrical inspection, the town planning information and the post-intervention file. Agencies handle this differently. Some arrange everything and settle the costs within their fee, others leave the applications to you.

Ask about that during the introductory meeting, together with the question of who follows up if a risk site turns up. Anyone who puts several agencies side by side sees those differences straight away. Through ImmoMakelaarVergelijker.be you compare a maximum of three agents from your region, free and without obligation, so you are not called by six agencies at once.

What you should do now

Put the soil certificate at the top of your checklist, together with the EPC and the electrical inspection. Request it as soon as you decide to sell, check whether your plot is registered as a risk site and plan any soil survey before the first viewings. That way your file sets the pace of the sale, and not the other way round. If you do not yet know which agency you will work with, first put a few agents from your municipality side by side and ask how they approach this kind of administration.