House Hunting in Luxembourg: A Restored Classic for $3 Million

The town of Hautcharage, with about 1,760 residents, is in the southwestern Luxembourg commune of Käerjeng — three miles east of Belgium, six miles north of France and 25 miles west of Germany. Käerjeng has many schools, supermarkets, bakeries and other resources, along with a 35-mile bicycle path, several parks and sports fields. The commune is home to Luxembourg’s largest brewery, Brasserie Nationale, as well as an industrial zone. Luxembourg City, a 25-minute drive east, has about 120,000 residents and houses several European Union headquarters, including the European Court of Justice. Luxembourg Airport is 30 minutes east.

Luxembourg — officially the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg — is a landlocked country with more than 600,000 residents, an increase from about 360,000 in 1980. It has had a strong real estate market for four decades, largely thanks to citizens of other countries.

With its business-friendly banking laws and low taxes, Luxembourg has long attracted foreign companies and their employees, particularly tech start-ups and financial companies. It is also home to Amazon’s European headquarters. (In 2014, scandal struck the Grand Duchy when it was revealed that scores of multinational companies had exploited the country’s laws to all but eliminate their tax bills.)

Last year was especially robust, said Harald-Sven Sontag, a real estate agent with RE/MAX Forum. “The economic and political instability of other countries in Europe — France with yellow vests and high level of taxation, Belgium still without government, the U.K. with Brexit — or elsewhere attracts more institutional and private investors to Luxembourg,” Mr. Sontag said.

A national tax-reform measure passed in 2017, which increased mortgage deductions and reduced capital-gains taxes, set off a wave of housing market activity that continues in 2020. In addition, low interest rates are spurring real estate investment, helping to push down supply and lift prices, said Jean-Jacques Michaux, a partner at House Brokers Real Estate, in Luxembourg City.

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