1 year Apartment Contract Possible (student)?

My experience tells me that it depends on the willingness of the landlord. He/she can be very flexible and give you a 1 yr lease and even let u break it with no penalty or they can be extremely rigid and make u sign a 1 yr lease but make u pay the balance of the yr. Same thing with the 3 yr lease. Simply put keep your fingers crossed and tell your potential landlord your needs and hope they are kind enuff to help you.

Thanks Crisscross,

Well I guess I am relieved that landlords have some discretion when agreeing on a length of lease. I know I will regret saying this however when we move out    

I hope to be settled by August-I will update this post so all can see my outcome.

Hi everyone, Here is an update of our situation as promised.

My wife and I spent two days in Bilzen Belgium and looked for apartments. *Reminder: Both my wife and I are full time grad students.

Long story short, We visited about 5 apartments and called about 20 landlords ranging from Hasselt to Bilzen. The landlords have quite a bit of discretion and power and declined renting their apartments to "two students" regardless of our income or marriage situation.

It was possible to find 1 year rental contracts, HOWEVER, some landlords wanted to then the raise the monthly rent to compensate for the time.

Belgium was a very difficult (and discriminatory) country to find a living situation for student families.

My wife (a German National) and I ended up renting an apartment on the western border of Germany (Relativley renting process and rules...) and we decided to commute to Belgium everyday.

P.S* We have a dog, and Belgians are really afraid of Dogs in apartments. Our German search yielded 4/5 dog friendly apartments.   

Plus Germany won the world cup, It's going to be a good year

Zing!

Thanks for the update! My husband and I will follow your path in about two weeks except we are teachers. Think that will matter?