Portrait of Serge Hannecart

Serge has been building and developing exciting residential and commercial plots for over 25 years. That’s hundreds of projects and thousands of lives touched. He is driven by beauty and has an eye for every detail. Consequently, conceiving and designing innovative concepts is his motivation to turn his job into his passion. His entrepreneurship and creativity are the essence of everything he does.

How it all started

Serge is a household name in the Belgian real estate scene. Back in 1989, he founded Himmos, and dramatically restyled the Antwerp skyline. Then, in 2002, Serge sold the company to the Dutch development group Heijmans, only to buy the shares back in 2010. Meanwhile, LIFE was born.

For the first six years, LIFE was all about Belgian residential real estate, about luxurious and funky places to live, in or near Belgium’s most exciting cities. Gradually, a more diverse portfolio of projects started to seep in: student housing with a twist, commercial projects for ambitious and growing companies and international investment projects. Today, Belgium is starting to feel a bit small, with projects in the Netherlands, Spain and Cape Verde.

In 2011 Serge and LIFE teamed up with contractor Mathieu Gijbels and two managing partners to form FUTURN, a company that specialises in the redevelopment of industrial real estate and brownfields.

The only remaining blind spot, commercial projects within city borders, has been integrated into LIFE through Downtown – yet another real estate venture. The story of Serge’s real estate endeavours doesn’t end there. In 2016, Antwerp celebrated the opening of the first Fosbury & Sons location, a one-of-a-kind brand of co-working environments. A little earlier, in 2012, Serge started developing residential houses in Cape Verde – an adventure that has grown into a development project of some 250 vacation units in one of mother nature’s most beautiful places.