We reported recently on the likely boost in French property in Paris and Lille due to the introduction of a new Eurostar train service. But Eurostar connects to more than just Paris. There is a direct service to Brussels in Belgium with connections on to Brugge, Namur, Antwerp and Ghent.

Brussels in now less than 2 hours from St Pancras station and is already seeing an increase in interest from British buyers keen to snap up a bargain before everyone jumps on the band wagon – or should that be railway carriage?

According to the Telegraph, Restored studio flats a few yards from the Grand Place can be picked up for as little as €70,000 (£50,000), and vast, contemporary loft-style duplexes in former industrial buildings go for €500,000 (£360,000).

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Houses in Brussels [Photo credits to Eric Wilcox on Flickr]

Writing the day after the biggest fall in the stock market since the outbreak of the Second Gulf War, a fall that’s related to property investment problems in the US, it’s reassuring to be looking at one real estate market that’s heavily influenced by the pay packets of civil servants.

For some time there has been speculation that the big enlargement of the EU in 2004 and the addition of Bulgaria and Romania at the beginning of 2007 will lead firstly to a big increase in EU bureaucrats and lobbyists from the new member states of Eastern Europe and that this influx would impart new vigour to the Brussels residential market, particularly in the European Union quarter.
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