You only need a residence permit if you're going to be resident for a prolonged period - it's not related to new or second-hand. Buying without residency needs a (I'm not sure of the proper title) foreign owner's license. This latter is usually organised by the Immobilier. One benefit of second-hand is thus that if you're buying from a foreigner (doesn't need to be British), they can just transfer the license to you (this is what happened to us).

The "20% tax on rental" is a new one on me - I don't have a clue what this is. There's no equivalent in conventional renting.

The agencies take a fairly hefty chunk, more like 20% but remember, the customer base is diverse: our agency speak German, English, Dutch, French and Italian. The main rental market is German and Dutch, not English.

So again, make sure that you include second-hand-rented-via-an-agency in your comparisons.

Interhome typically take 25% of the revenue raised on renting your place for marketing the property for you, putting it into their brochure and releasing it to the travel agencies globally who in turn get a sales comission for selling the place. They also take roughly a further 7 - 10% for their own profit and to cover things like cleaning, laundry and services included for the client like the use of the sports centre. Thus on a £1000 week rental you would typically get £650 back.

Re second hand, yes there is a huge level of second hand property available. However unless you buy a property with a residency permit attached to the place it is extremely difficult and potentially very risky where you could lose everything.

Buying second hand without a permit you enter the rota for permits which currently has a three year waiting list. New build constructors offer a get out clause with all expenses incurred paid back to you if for whatever reason you don't get your permit such as Switzerland closing down to Foreigners. With a second hand sale there is no such clause, you'll have paid for the place but it wont be yours.

I agree mse new build prices are higher than the older second hand property on the market but this is due to a general shift in the amount invested into the property by the builder. Almost all new property being built is classed as 4* and above and as a result there is significantly more money going into things like granite kitchen surfaces and such like.

This is in turn seeing an increased demand for these properties from the rental market and as such companies like Interhome are offering discounts to put your property on their books.

Hope this helps!

You guys are so helpful; thank you very much. If you put residenz edelweiss leukerbad into google you will see what we have reserved. It's a 2 bed 3.5 room 4* FEWO (ferienwohnung, or holiday apartment) on the third floor 90sqm plus 12sqm balcony (two) space. Usual stuff, underfloor heating, Top kitchen ensuite for both rooms etc.
Two things
1. The guaranteed rental (from which swiss tax @ 20% ) is added to the guaranteed amount looks like only being 7800 sfr for 22 weeks high season, which strikes me as being low.
2. I have wandered over the domigo and interhome website and found an identical flat in the identical location within the chalet but in a different chalet block (we get block D, this was in Block B) and you know where interhome show availability there was oceans of green. I query therefore what incentive interhome have in letting your flat and whether it would be better to have a local agent, even one attached to the edelweiss development handle it for us. I was planning to set up a website that would pop up on googles first page using metawords and a text heavy splash page, coupled with an online booking system. A colleague does this on his flats in Les Houches, near Chamonix. (www.chamonixapartments.org)
What yearly occupancy rate are you getting? Have you been able to market the property yourself parallel with interhome, advising them when a week you have received a booking on goes red?
Millions of questions I know but I really appreciate the "what goes around comes around" concept of info partaking. No doubt you were where I am now a couple of years ago.
Cheers guys
Peter

You can rent upto 100% of winter weeks in Valais but summers are weak. The swiss will screw you on price for absolutely everything - everything I've done there is a rip-off and I'm used to living in an expensive country. I've had disasterous customer service from the rental agency (no names...) but it wasn't interhome. Remember some agencies who rent homes AND sell ski passes will rent your home for peanuts in order to maximise ski pass sales.

Toddy

TopperT is underlining that my experience is with apartments, rather than chalets. When we were looking in La Tzoumaz, about 25%-30% of the apartments for sale were foreign-owned (mainly Germans and Dutch, some Belgians and British), and the license thus carried-over to the new owner. We had a choice of four in the 85-apartment complex that our place is in. The licence thing didn't seem to be a big deal. However, it may be that La Tzoumaz is atypical in terms of the degree of foreign ownership. Plus the availability of licences does seem to have reduced in the last 18 months or so.

Our nett receipt (after all taxes, service, laundry, cleaning etc.) from a week's rental is about CHF 700. This year, we've probably got around 9 weeks rental via the agency and 3 weeks through personal contacts in the UK. We charge personal rentals at the nett rate. But bear in mind that we do use the place a lot ourselves (although not the popular Christmas and New Year weeks).

What I like about using a local agency is that you can just ask if the place is free at the last minute and go. They ask for your personal reservation weeks for the forthcoming winter season in September, as you'd expect, but this is flexible.

The whole website thing is interesting. Ours is "www.laforet35.com". I've subscribed to GoogleAds and that reveals that the main search term is "Verbier ski" so I did tie an ad into that as a trial. But it isn't cheap, and it's impossible to judge how many actual bookings you get. All the people who rent our place seem to be German or Dutch, and I gather that this is in-line with the agency's general experience too . But again, this could be a pattern that's specific to La Tzoumaz and not other resorts.

Although on-line web booking may seem the ideal mechanism, it's interesting that the majority of agencies (in La Tzoumaz) don't offer it (Interhome being the exception). My theory is that mainland Europeans aren't constrained by having to pre-book Channel crossings/flights/carhire: so they seem to just ring up a rental agency in somewhere they fancy, and talk on the 'phone. Most agencies speak German and French, so this is perhaps the easiest way to do it. We poor Brits seem to be the only Europeans who book our hols close to a year in advance (because of ferries/flights).

My other theory is that this means that a lot of the bookings are late - Germans, Danes and Benelux seem to wait until the conditions are good (like this year) and then ring up and book very late in the day. But a good year like 2005/6 may not be typical. You probably could have got close to the maximum rental this year (theoretically 16 weeks for us) if you'd given your agency carte blanche, pestered them, and not used it at all yourself. However, in a bad year, the occupancy rate could be bad if the conditions were obviously poor. Just an idea ..

It also depends a lot on just what you are trying to do. Some owners are obviously much keener to get rentals than others. For us, it's just nice that renting when the place is empty covers the annual running costs. However, some owners clearly can't be bothered, don't need the income, and like the flexibility of being able to go there any time. Plus it's a lot less wear-and-tear and you can 'personalise' the place in a way you wouldn't when strangers are using it. Conversely, some chalet owners (and this is the title of the thread, afer all) absolutely need to maximise rentals in order to pay the mortgage or make it economically viable.

And above all of that, I still can't get over how relatively under-exploited the summer season is. When British resorts like The Peaks and The Lake District are teeming with people, (ditto Chamonix, I gather) the Swiss equivalents are relatively quiet. Which is nice, but strangely inexplicable.

maybe the marketing needs changing. Holiday cottage companies who market gites maybe one way, website with relevant metawords and a booking "request" form as opposed to a fully blown online booking form is another, allowing one to check with the agency if there is one before saying yea. affinity clubs like those who enjoy, like me (sad I know) travelling on swiss railways. I guess it is an experiment and if in the first 5 years the rental income from the guarantee covers the interest on the mortgage plus expenses then one can develop a strategy for the ensuing years thereafter. Maybe a sea of red through the guarantee period may encourage people to book other weeks on the premise that the apartment is well used, therefore it must be a nice place for a holiday. Leukerbad may run their own site and I already know that a resident does the cleaning, changeovers etc.
all grist to the mill and a learning experiance I am sure. Leukerbad is as yet undiscovered in the UK, being the place of preference for the swiss, germans and dutch I gather. No harm there then. The wreckability factor reduces in my view!

Many smaller agencies don't specifically allocate you an apartment until you arrive. The benefit is that they can tolerate cancellations or unscheduled use from owners without disappointing anyone. The deposit they require can thus be reduced in comparison to on-line agencies where you book a specific apartment. And 'though they ask owners to indicate private useage before the season starts, it makes it more flexible, as a booking can be re-assigned to another place. This is more attractive to customers and owners alike.

I have talked to the agency about why they don't do an on-line enquiry form. What they said was that firstly, most Germans, Dutch and Benelux like to use the 'phone. They can ring up, have a chat, and still make a provisional reservation.

Second, on-line systems, they believe, seem to have the problem that unless you get a deposit, you often end-up with lots more reservations that then go 'cold'. And if you demand a deposit 'up-front' it then puts a lot of your prospective customers off.

It's all very interesting, as there's clearly a lot of detail to this holiday letting business. My only scepticism is that I feel a lot of the Swiss publicity is a bit 'dated', especially stuff from the tourism offices. Also, that a lot of the agencies have reached a comfortable 'steady state' where it's not worth bothering to be innovative.

To be fair, the agencies are limited both by the snow conditions and by the lift company. The latter dictate when the lifts run - especially in the summer. When the Commune did an owner's survey last year, opening more lifts for longer in the summer was one of the top demands.

Thanks Dave. Again all food for thought. Leukerbad has three or four lifts that run all year round and a hike over the gemmipass which is very popular. The resort sits at 1400m and one can ski/walk up to 2500m. Hopefully the easter weather will continue and we can see for ourselves how the beginning of the summer season might look, although there probably will be snow at 2500m still. It seems that the issues are the same for Leukerbad as they are for 4 Valleys, one just has to crack it somehow.
Still, if the going price for a new build is un movable and the rental guarantees to cover mortgage interest service charges, security, clenaing and various taxes are sorted for 5 years then I can take a view after that. I also find out from the immobilier that the property we have our eye on is not yet completed so technically we are buying off plan. It's the 5th of 5 so resales on the other 4 once it is completed will start next year, no doubt at a higher price. New Build usually don't move in price until the project is completed and as you rightly say these are 4X plus properties the new build competition is limited at the moment.

Blueellerslie: Another factor is the dramatic transition to and difference between low/high seasons. This may again be more of a La Tzoumaz thing, but the change in the place is very marked, depending on whether the lifts are running or not. For a Brit., this alternation of high/low/high/low season is a surprise. This is why the lift opening dates are so important, as there's very little rental potential if the lifts aren't running.

I agree with you Dave, (call me Peter) I have found over 50 years of travelling to switzerland that the lifts are v. important in creating summer tourism. Every Canton (the most familiar I am with is Glarus) is striving to get as many tourist dollars into the coffers as possible. Every commune (very small hamlet upwards, of which Glarus has 29) has a website and promotes it actively.
I think that the Germans and the Dutch (strange but true) have a greater propensity to bung themselves up a mountain for a 7 hour walk then the british do, although judging by the lake district in summer one could be forgiven for being mislead. Those English that do travel might not be able to afford the 4star properties currently being built although I paid £340 for a week in windermere in a "potting shed" a few years back. It comes back to marketing again and I am sure there is a target audience out there just itching to rent the flat! I tried a google search using German and French Metawords (those words that google looks for when setting up the sort selection) and lo and behold plenty of sites popped up in German and in French. So a translated website would also be very useful. I am convinced that rentals via telephone may only form a small part of the agents business. Being in the financial services business and also active in our local church which, is very well off: I know I am the Financial Committee Member; word of mouth is a very very powerful marketing tool.How many people do you think come back year after year after year? How many recommend others to come and stay? Very interesting stats I am sure.

Peter: Actually, I think that there's an enormous potential summer market, and even without the lifts open, people would love the place. We've come quite close to trying-out something between myself, my wife, and an interpreter she uses for her projects, plus the latter's husband who is a pretty good oenoligst and an excellent watercolour painter. We thought that you coule advertise in the walkers and cyclist magazines for `mixed' holidays where we ran parallel courses in learning French, painting, and walking/cycling and (as I'm a geologist originally) perhaps a natural history fieldtrip. Our apartment block contains a communal restaurant/kitchen/lounge so this would work well. This might appeal to couples where each has a different interest and the other tends to get dragged-along on holiday.

Most of the apartments are empty in the summer and only cost about £200/week. So we thought about midweek-to-midweek courses plus offering a apartment to each couple or family.

The big problem is the economics. We couldn't see how we could do this profitably. There'd be the problem of insurance on anything that was an outdoor activity. Plus, you would need to organise airport transfers and transport around. And line-up cycle rental.

I think that this sort of thing is only going to work if it's done by locals or semi-permanent Brits. who can speak the language. So sadly, we've given up on the idea, but I'm still sure it has potential .....

I see my client and friend tomorrow who owns two properties in les houches, chamonix. I am sure with the networks we have we can get the summer season sorted. My Father is a geologist as well- Jurassic Paleontologist,a world authority on ammonites . I'm quite happy just walking alpine sedimentary rocks without taking a hammer and a cold chisel as well!
We have no intention of living permanently in CH- even though I would love to.So I collect nostalgia and old pre 1850 philatelic items from Ct. Glarus instead.
Tell me: how do the banks assess affordability when deciding how much to lend? Is the rental income from the property taken into account if it is guaranteed? Will they need accounts and a projection as I am self employed?

I have just multimapped the distance between Leukerbad and Nendaz and Verbier. Nendaz is 52k and Verbier is 92k, which should take, using the rhone valley motorway about 40 mins and 1 and a quarter hours to do. Are skiiers likely to want to travel those distances in the morning? Once they get there (verbier and Nendaz) do the lifts have long queues? Is it easy to park?

Dave: As my 13 month old daughter has been booked on the May 2027 ascent of everest and shows no reticence in practicing up the stairs using the British Army three point rule, an apartment in the swiss alps sounds like a good start. I checked mileage and distances dave. We will be about 52k/ 45 mins from you; not unreasonable a distance for those who want to Ski the Gemmi one day and 4 valleys the next. Besides you'll put the kettle on won't you....

Just an update to let all those looking at investing in the Commune of Nendaz and surrounding villages, I've just been informed there is now a 4 year wait for your permit to come through with this figure having increased from the previous 3 year wait.

Construction is still going ahead in the area but it is getting more difficult to buy in this fantastic region.

With the total number of permits fixed for the whole of Switzerland the time delays may also be effecting other regions as well? As we bought in Nendaz and subsequently set up alpinepropertyinvestments.co.uk to help others find a place I am not sure how other areas are coping? Anybody with feedback, it would be good to know? Blueellerslie do you know whats happening in Leukerbad?

Anyone telling you like in a recent magazine article that permits only take 8 - 12 weeks to come through is rubbish and should be ignored.

Hi Blueellerslie,

Re the multimap and distances, of 52K Nendaz and 92K Verbier dont forget to take into consideration to get to both of these villages you have to consider the long winding road up to the village particularly to Verbier which seems to go on forever as well as the fact that people wanting to ski will obviously be making the journey in the Winter so will have the added bonus of having to travel in icy conditions.

That said my wife and I plan to ski all the surrounding resorts over the coming years and provided you leave early enough its not a problem. At least that way you get to beat the traffic and park easily.

JUst back from an interesting factfinding mission to Leukerbad. Absolutely brilliant.The reserved apartment is not yet completed but we saw the equivelant in a different but exactly the same chalet, already completed. We stayed, courtesy of the immobilier in a 1 bed apartment that was absolutely huge. The block was not completely sold so if we find that the one we reserved ends up being too expensive we have a fallback plan. An interesting appointment with the bank who basically said, subject to income verification not a problem, offered us 2.58% variable and a free current account. The 5 year guarantee is good for starters, covering interest @ 3.5% (so almost 1% towards capital repayments as well) open ended upper age limit, 70% LTV with a 4% capital repayment for the first 5 years, then interest only.
The resident admin manager also agreed terms for rentals outside the guarantee ie in the low season at 8% commission and her clients regularly get 300 out of 365 days rented. So all in all a good trip- Easyjet are brilliant and the checkin with 10 pieces of luggage and two whining children went smoothly and took 5 mins each end. There is still tons of snow at 2,000m and so the chance to go tobogganing and cross country skiing as well as some downhill presented itself. Thermal springs made the resort a year round attraction as well.

Interesting footnote: Crans Montana is now closed to 2nd home purchases for all nationalities, which makes Anzeres more attractive especially as there is a lift to be built between the two villages next year. It won't be long before Anzeres goes the same way. I queried at the time with the bank manager I saw last week whether Leukerbad could go the same way and he intimated that the Koller agreement could be history by 2008, making it possible for Permit B holders to buy anywhere in switzerland. This would be due to EU bilateral agreements allowing free movement of labour and property ownership in Non EU countries as well. But it could happen in Leukerbad as early as next year.

regularly get 300 out of 365 days rented...

that's BS, you won't. You may fill late Dec-late April for skiing and June/July/Aug outside of that but forgot anything else...

Toddy,

Have to agree with you, there is no way you will get 300 days rental in any of the ski resorts!!!!

Even before the recession when the Swiss were vacationing in the mountains the max you could expect was 40 weeks!

Sorry but it just does not stack up. A typical apartment or chalet in a good location of 4* rating should rent for between 15 - 20 weeks through an agency. Then you could get an extra 10 weeks if your lucky through friends, family and a website but nowhere near the 43 weeks being quoted!

Toddy: I'd have to agree that 43 weeks rental seems very high indeed for anywhere in the Valais, even for a premier location. It may be that a few owners get that sort of occupancy, but I'd be surprised if it was generally achievable. I've visited out-of-season, and the difference in most resorts is dramatic. Perhaps you could verify what out-of season is like with someone independent, like the Tourism Office? Being a Spa helps, I daresay, so it is likely to be better than non-spa locations. How about searching the Commune website to see if they report visitor numbers for the year? As they levy a tourist tax for each visitor, this information should be available.

After initially being put off by global warming reports, I have decided to take a second look at buying some swiss real estate in one of the smaller resorts in the 4 valleys.

Can any one tell me which resort in the 4 valleys is the best base for skiing, other than Verbier.

I last skied in Verbier 8 years ago and I can't remember much about the satellite resorts. For example is it easy to ski from La Tzoumaz to the Medran Lift, in Verbier. What happens if snow is poor, would I get stuck in one of the smaller satellite resort for a week because the links are not skiable?

In these satellite resorts, what is the Apres ski like. I am at a stage in my life where I have a young family and appreciate a quiet resort, however, just once in a while, it is good to go and get hammered. So do these places have more than one local pub? I skied in Zurs last year. Good skiing but Not much happens there at night!

I still intend to buy a property in Switzerland and will visit within the next two weeks.

Regards

J J B