Buying a Holiday Home to Rent Out: The Guide for the Future Landlord-Owner

Buying a chalet or an apartment in the mountains to rent out short term can be an excellent investment. But between the love-at-first-sight of a sunny viewing and a genuinely profitable rental asset, there is investor reasoning to apply — starting before the purchase offer. Price per square metre, legal framework, net yield, forgotten costs: here is what a future landlord-owner must check before signing.

The purchase price: think in yield, not per square metre

In the Swiss Alps, the price gap between resorts is considerable, and it cannot be read from the label alone. In Verbier, the most expensive market in the western Swiss Alps, expect CHF 20,000 to 30,000 per square metre, and well beyond 40,000 for prestige properties. In Zermatt, supply is frozen by the lack of buildable land and the median price hovers around CHF 18,000/m². In Nendaz, in the same 4 Vallées ski area, the entry ticket is 30 to 40% lower for equivalent ski-in/ski-out access.

The right question is never “how much does the m² cost?” but “how much can this m² generate?”. A property that is 35% cheaper and rents almost as well offers a higher yield. This is exactly the trade-off we detail resort by resort in our dedicated guides, for example for buying to let in Verbier or buying to let in Zermatt: prices, promising neighbourhoods and real rental potential are set against one another.

Lex Weber and Lex Koller: what you are allowed to buy

Before making any offer, two laws determine your project.

The Lex Weber (Article 75b of the Federal Constitution) caps the share of second homes at 20% in the municipalities concerned. Beyond this threshold — which is the case in almost every resort — the creation of new second homes is in principle frozen. In practice, this steers you towards existing properties (existing second homes remain freely transferable) or towards dwellings designated for tourist accommodation, the famous “warm beds”, which are governed by a distinct regime precisely because they are dedicated to rental. A property already classified as tourist accommodation is therefore not a constraint: it is often the most relevant option for an investor-landlord.

The Lex Koller (the federal law on the acquisition of real estate by persons abroad, LFAIE) regulates purchases by non-residents. Depending on your nationality, your place of residence and the nature of the property, the acquisition may be unrestricted, subject to authorisation or subject to quotas. This is a point to clarify before committing, not after.

Estimating the real yield: the only figure that matters

The gross yield advertised by a seller is rarely the yield you will actually receive. For a short-term rental property, three variables make all the difference: the average price per night (highly seasonal in the mountains), the real occupancy rate over the year, and the fees taken between the guest and you.

As an order of magnitude, a well-positioned apartment in a major resort can generate from a few tens of thousands of francs to more than a hundred thousand francs in annual turnover depending on its size, view and location. But turnover is not income: between platform fees, cleaning, the concierge service and running costs, the gap is real. An honestly estimated yield is calculated net, after all these deductions, based on local occupancy data and not on a sales pitch.

The costs people forget at the time of purchase

The classic trap for the first-time investor is to reason on the purchase price and the hoped-for rent, forgetting the cost structure of a mountain property:

• Condominium (PPE) charges, often high (maintenance of common areas, collective heating, sometimes wellness facilities or a shuttle).
• Tourist tax to collect and remit on every rented night, on top of an annual flat fee for your personal use.
• Cleaning and linen between each stay — the heaviest cost item in a resort, especially where labour is scarce.
• Insurance suited to seasonal letting, distinct from an occupant’s policy.
• Depreciation of furnishings: a property let at the top end of the market gets refreshed regularly.

Properly anticipated, these costs do not kill profitability — they make it predictable. Poorly anticipated, they turn a “great deal” into a disappointment.

From signing to the first booking

Once the property is secured, the value is created in the letting phase: furnishing to the resort’s standards, bringing it into compliance, professional photos, creating and distributing the listing, dynamic pricing aligned with seasonality. It is a profession in its own right, and this is where support makes the difference between a property that fills up all year round and one that lies dormant.

We support buyers upstream, from the search phase, through our purchase assistance service: analysing a property’s rental potential before the offer, so you buy with full knowledge of the facts. Then, once the property is yours, our rental management takes over the entire cycle — listings, guest welcome, cleaning, pricing, declarations — so that the acquisition becomes a regular income without demanding your time.

New build or existing: two different logics

Existing properties have the advantage of being immediately available and often better located, at the heart of the historic resorts; on the other hand, they require you to anticipate a renovation and an upgrade to today’s standards, which the high-end clientele demands. New builds, made rarer by the Lex Weber, offer modern energy performance and comfort appreciated by guests, but come at a premium price and are sometimes located on the outskirts. For a rental project, the decisive criterion remains the same in both cases: location and access to the slopes trump almost everything else, because they are what fill the calendar and support the nightly rate.

Buying smart means buying with the right figures

Buying a holiday home to rent out remains one of the best ways to put a mountain property to work — provided you replace love at first sight with calculation. Price per m² weighed against rental potential, Lex Weber status clarified, yield estimated net and costs anticipated: this discipline is what separates an investment from a millstone.

Before you decide, have the real potential of the property you are targeting estimated: our free owner audit gives you a revenue projection and a review of your obligations within 24 hours.