Marine moved from the U.S. to Brussels with her family—our mortgage is under $3,000/month: Take a look inside

My husband Martin and I met in Brussels in 2012, when I literally stepped on his toes at my neighborhood farmer's market. At the time, I was working as a security manager at NATO headquarters, and he was on a business trip from his home in the Netherlands. 

Three days later, we went on our first date. Five weeks later, I moved to Washington, D.C., to take a post at the Pentagon. Almost a year and a half later, we decided we'd get married and he'd join me in D.C. 

As a Marine Corps reserve officer, I took advantage of my VA loan benefits, and we bought a small home in 2014. We brought our newborn daughter home there in 2016.

But we always knew we wanted to move back to Europe eventually. 

When the pandemic hit, it gave us time to pause and plan our long-awaited return to Europe. 

We wanted to be a short drive away from my in-laws in my husband's hometown of Rotterdam as they aged. We ultimately chose Brussels, the capital of Belgium and the administrative center of the European Union. We calculated that we could live there for less than D.C. or the Netherlands, and it's only 90 minutes from Rotterdam.

It helped that I already had a solid network of friends in Brussels, too.

We sold our D.C. home for $899,000 in 2021 — a 67.7% increase compared to what we'd paid for it. And after a year renting in Brussels, we started looking for a place to buy. Our two main requirements: It had to be walking distance to our daughter's school and have an outdoor space big enough to eat outside. 

Six months and 20 apartments into our search, we finally found "the one" in Saint Gilles, the neighborhood south of the city center where I'd lived before.

I fell in love with the 14-foot ceilings, the Art Nouveau buildings, and the great parks nearby.

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