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Tenant: How to Prove Your Reliability and with Which Tools?

Rental market under pressure in Belgium: discover how to prove your reliability as a tenant using the right tools, including Tecto Score and TectoPass from ImmoTecto.

Tenant: How to Prove Your Reliability and with Which Tools?

Tenant: How to Prove Your Reliability in a Tight Market?

Finding rental accommodation in Belgium has never been more difficult. In 2024, the Dewaele Rent Barometer revealed that the supply of available housing dropped by 16%, while demand increased by 10%. The result: on average, 34 candidates compete for a single available property on the market. In this context, presenting a solid and credible application is no longer an advantage—it's an absolute necessity. But how, in practical terms, can you prove your reliability as a tenant, without cheating, without stress, and inspiring confidence from the very first contact?

Why Proof of Reliability Has Become Essential

The Belgian rental market is structurally imbalanced. According to the 2024 Barometer from Federia, the Federation of French-speaking Real Estate Agents of Belgium, estate agencies signed 10% fewer rental contracts in 2024, even though demand remained strong. In Brussels, rents now average €1,320 per month (excluding charges), and some municipalities no longer have any flats available below €1,000.

Faced with this reality, landlords and estate agencies are applying increasingly stringent selection criteria. A detailed application file, containing all the necessary information (pay slips, identity documents, sometimes even a cover letter), has become the norm. Financial security remains one of the main factors in choosing the future tenant.

Worse still: document fraud has become widespread. National statistics show a 40% increase in falsified rental applications in one year, with approximately 1 in 10 applications containing at least one forged document. Pay slips, employment contracts and tax assessments are the most commonly falsified documents. This situation creates a climate of mistrust that directly harms honest candidates.

As a tenant in good faith, you therefore need to stand out, not by doing more than others, but by proving your reliability in an objective and unassailable manner.

Traditional Documents: Necessary But Insufficient

The traditional rental application typically includes:

  1. A valid identity document
  2. The last three pay slips (or equivalent proof of income)
  3. The most recent tax assessment notice
  4. An employment contract or employer's certificate
  5. The last three rent receipts or a certificate from the previous landlord

These documents remain indispensable. But in a tight market, they're no longer enough to distinguish you. They're easily imitated, difficult to verify quickly, and their paper presentation doesn't always inspire the immediate confidence required by a landlord under pressure from numerous simultaneous applications.

A personalised cover letter can be a plus, provided it's concise, sincere and tailored to the property viewed. It demonstrates your seriousness and commitment, two qualities that every landlord seeks.

Open Banking: The New Benchmark in Rental Reliability

This is where a major development changes the game. Open Banking, regulated in Belgium and throughout the European Union by the Payment Services Directive (PSD2), allows a tenant to authorise, in a secure and voluntary manner, the analysis of their real banking data. Unlike a paper pay slip, this data cannot be falsified: it comes directly from your bank.

This is the principle behind ImmoTecto, the Belgian proptech platform founded by Jespers Mervyn, dedicated to fighting rental fraud. By connecting your bank accounts via Open Banking, ImmoTecto generates a Tecto Score, a rental reliability score at €0, calculated solely on your actual rent payment behaviour: have you paid your rent, on the due date. Nothing else is analysed—not your income, not your spending, not your savings. The score ranges from 0 to 100, with up to 10 bonus points.

This score doesn't lie. It can't be fabricated. It represents you as you really are, which is precisely what landlords are looking for.

TectoPass: Your Certified Proof of Reliability, Anywhere and Anytime

Once your Tecto Score is calculated, ImmoTecto allows you to go even further with TectoPass: a certified PDF document, at €0 for you today, that you can share with any landlord or estate agency, even outside the platform.

TectoPass offers several concrete advantages:

  1. It can be verified instantly via a QR code, with no account or registration required for the landlord
  2. It summarises your financial profile in a clear, readable and professional manner
  3. It works off-platform, making it usable in all your applications, whether through an agency, a private landlord or a third-party platform
  4. It demonstrates your transparency and proactivity, two strong signals that work in your favour in a competitive selection

In a market where the slightest difference can tip the balance, spontaneously presenting a TectoPass is like telling the landlord: I have nothing to hide, and I'm giving you the means to verify it.

Best Practices to Maximise Your Chances

Beyond the tools, a few simple habits strengthen your credibility when applying for a rental:

  1. Prepare your application in advance, even before viewing a property, so you can hand it over on the spot if you fall in love immediately
  2. Take care with your communication with the landlord or agent: punctuality, clarity and courtesy are part of the informal assessment that every landlord makes mentally
  3. Be transparent about your situation: an atypical profile (self-employed, fixed-term contract, expatriate) well explained and supported by solid evidence is better than a standard profile presented vaguely
  4. Offer additional guarantees if your situation warrants it: a joint guarantor from a close relative, or a rental guarantee equivalent to two months' rent as provided for by Belgian legislation
  5. Use the Tecto Score and TectoPass from ImmoTecto to objectively demonstrate your reliability with certified banking data, where paper documents remain vulnerable to doubt

Conclusion: Transparency, Your Best Asset

In a Belgian market where 34 candidates compete on average for a single available property, the competition isn't won by presenting the same documents as everyone else. It's won by inspiring immediate, objective and verifiable confidence.

The tools now exist to achieve this. At ImmoTecto, we've designed the Tecto Score and TectoPass precisely to give honest tenants the means to prove it, simply, quickly and flawlessly.

Calculate your Tecto Score on immotecto.com and obtain your certified TectoPass, at €0 for you today. Because your reliability deserves to be recognised.

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Tenant: Prove Your Reliability with the Right Tools | IMMOTECTO