Figures: 677 investigations, 48% hits, 3 million recovered

From March 2021, the start of the framework agreement, to the end of 2022, 35 Flemish housing companies together had 677 investigations carried out. In 322 of them, real estate was found in the tenant’s name, a hit rate of 48 percent. The investigations were carried out by the five agencies in the framework agreement, in 41 countries inside and outside Europe.

The hit rate is high because an investigation is started only on a concrete suspicion. The figures therefore say nothing about social housing tenants in general; they do say that a well-substantiated suspicion proves correct in almost half of the cases.

After the first year of the framework agreement, the Flemish Minister for Housing gave interim figures: 421 investigations in 18 countries, 189 hits, a hit rate of 45 percent. In Limburg there were 263 investigations and 131 hits (50 percent). In the month of March 2022 alone, ownership was found in 85 of the 104 cases investigated, mainly in Italy (37) and Türkiye (24). Thirty housing companies were taking part at that time.

In Limburg, the hit rate of 53 percent was higher still than the Flemish average. Housing company Wonen in Limburg, with 24,000 homes the largest in the province, took stock of three years in March 2024: 536 cases with a serious suspicion, 99 tenants who had to leave their home, 227 cases without findings and 210 still under investigation or in the resolution phase. 400,000 euros of wrongly received reduction was recovered. “We do not carry out random sampling,” the management told VRT NWS. The province has a long tradition of investigation into social fraud; the labour prosecutor’s office in Limburg uncovered in 2017 a network that helped at least 257 persons obtain benefits with false documents, for more than 13 million euros. That report is in our archive.

Up to May 2024, 3 million euros had been recovered in Flanders from tenants in whose case foreign property was found. Woonhaven Antwerp, the largest housing company in the country, alone recovered 1 million euros. This concerns the social rent reduction, the difference between the rent paid and the market value, for the years in which the tenant did not satisfy the property ownership condition, sometimes increased by the investigation costs.

To this is added the reimbursement of the investigation costs by Wonen in Vlaanderen: in full in the event of a hit and 75 percent without a hit. For the housing company, an investigation is therefore in the worst case a quarter of the invoice, and in the event of a hit the investigation costs are reimbursed in full. In Brussels, where no such scheme exists, only 11 leases have been terminated since 2024 and 0 euros has been recovered.

In 2025, housing companies submitted only 89 reimbursement requests to Wonen in Vlaanderen, with 39 hits: 43.8 percent. That is a sharp decline compared with the first two years, while the hit rate remained virtually the same.

Several explanations are possible for that decline: the mergers into housing companies have claimed attention, the first wave of suspicious cases has been dealt with, and in some companies the subject has faded after the first years. What the figures show in any case is that cases involving a suspicion still produce a hit in more than four out of ten cases. Anyone who does not have an investigation carried out leaves possible hits unused. Whether recovery is possible does, however, depend on the individual case and the assessment by the competent authority.

The Flemish figures are based on the reimbursement requests that housing companies submit to Wonen in Vlaanderen. An investigation counts as a hit when the agency has identified real estate in the name of the tenant or a household member. Investigations that a company has carried out outside the framework agreement, or for which it does not request reimbursement, are not included. Investigations by public centres for social welfare (OCMWs) are not included either: they fall outside the scheme and are counted nowhere centrally.

The figures are therefore a lower limit. They also say nothing about the cases in which a company hesitated and ultimately did not have an investigation carried out. A pre-check is intended precisely for those cases: it usually makes the doubt more concrete within 1 to 2 weeks.

A simple calculation for a housing company with ten cases in which a concrete suspicion exists: at a hit rate of 45 percent, that may yield four to five cases with ownership. Per case, this may involve a social rent reduction of several thousand euros per year, often over several years, plus a vacated home for someone on the waiting list. Through the framework agreement, the investigation costs are reimbursed in full in the event of a hit. This is a worked example, not a promise: the outcome depends on the individual case and the assessment by the competent authority.

The threshold to begin is low. At Bureaubuitenland België, every case starts with a pre-check of usually 1 to 2 weeks; only then do you decide on a full in-depth investigation. How the framework agreement works and what it reimburses is described in the Flemish framework agreement explained.

Sources: answers by the Flemish Minister for Housing to parliamentary questions (2023, 2024, 2026); VRT NWS, 12 April 2022 and VRT NWS, 27 March 2024; Knack and Het Laatste Nieuws on the framework agreement; N-VA press release; figures from Wonen in Vlaanderen for 2025. The figures are rounded as stated in the sources.