The numbers
The currency question
A house in francs, pounds, dollars or dirhams is a currency position whether you wanted one or not. What it has done to buyers in the last fifteen years, and how to decide before you are in love.
Graubünden · Switzerland
St. Moritz & Engadin
The oldest winter resort in the world and the most expensive alpine address in Europe, with a foreigner quota that makes every permitted sale to a non-resident an event. St. Moritz is priced in francs, held for decades and sold to the next family by introduction.
The Ranesta Index
€25,000 to 40,000
Prime band, per m²
€55,000
Trophy, per m²
1.5 to 2.5%
Gross yield
60%
Sold off-market
2.7%
Cost to acquire
0.8%
Cost to hold, a year
Editorial estimate of prime asking bands, September 2026. Not a valuation. Typical entry €5.0 m, trophy from €50 m. Prime marketing time about 300 days.
Where exactly
Suvretta
The hill west of the town: the largest chalets in the Alps on plots of half a hectare, the private ski lift and the hotel. Forty to fifty-five thousand a square metre; sales are counted on one hand a year.
St. Moritz Dorf and Bad
The town itself: the apartments above the Via Serlas, the buildings on the lake, and the Bad below with the newer developments. The liquid part of the market, in so far as any of it is.
Champfèr, Silvaplana and Sils
The villages up the valley on the lakes: quieter, more Engadin than St. Moritz, with the summer market of the Sils families and the engadin houses that are protected to the last window.
Pontresina and Celerina
Across the valley, with the Bernina at the end of it: chalets and apartments for buyers who ski more than they dine, at prices a fifth below the town.
The short version
A resort with a quota
Two laws shape St. Moritz. The Lex Koller allows a non-resident foreigner to buy a holiday home here, unlike in Zürich, but only within a cantonal quota of permits that runs to a few dozen a year for the whole of Graubünden and is applied for property by property. The second-home initiative of 2012 then stopped the building of new holiday homes almost entirely. Supply is what exists; demand is the world.
The result is a market where price discovery barely happens. A Suvretta chalet is one of perhaps forty, it changes hands when a family decides it has had enough winters, and the buyer is somebody the family or its bank already knows. Sixty per cent of prime sales are private, and the desk regards that as an underestimate.
Held in francs, the asset has also been a currency position for every European buyer since 2008. The exit is taxed by the canton on the gain, less the longer you hold, and the annual wealth tax applies to non-residents on the property. Buyers who run the numbers in francs and hold for twenty years have done extraordinarily well; buyers who bought for a season have not.
Worth knowing
Who can buy
Non-resident foreigners may buy a holiday home only within the cantonal quota and with a permit; the quota is small and the wait is real
Transfer tax
Graubünden charges about 2 per cent, customarily split by contract
Second-home law
The 2012 initiative limits new second homes; existing ones carry the right and are the supply
Wealth tax
Cantonal, on the property, for non-residents too
Capital gains
Cantonal property-gains tax, falling with the years of ownership
Season
Two: December to April, and the summer of the lakes, July and August
Who is buying
Italian, German and Swiss families for a century, then British, American and Gulf buyers in Suvretta and the town, and the Milanese who own the summer in Sils. Family offices hold the largest chalets in the name of the next generation.
What the desk is working on
Any chalet in Suvretta, lakefront in the town or at Silvaplana, and an engadin house in Sils with the consents in order. The desk opens a St. Moritz mandate only once the permit route for the buyer is understood.
Buying notes
Non-resident foreign buyers need a cantonal permit within the quota; the contract is conditional on it. Transfer tax of about two per cent, split by custom; notary fees modest. Costs are under three per cent all in for the buyer. Wealth tax and the property-gains tax are modelled with the Graubünden profile in the holding and exit instruments.
Open buyer mandates
- M-131A collector seeks a chalet on Suvretta or a house in Sils, 20 to 60 million francs, with a holding horizon of twenty years and the permit route understood.
The hotspot vote
In the Engadin
Questions buyers ask
Yes, as a holiday home, within the cantonal quota and with a permit that the notary applies for. The quota is small, the wait can be a season, and a property already held under a permit is easier to acquire than a new application. Swiss residents buy freely.
Forty chalets, half a hectare each, the sun, the private lift and a hundred years of the same families. Nothing new will be built there, ever. The buyers know it and so do the sellers.
The town for the season and the services; Sils and Silvaplana for the lakes, the summer and the engadin silence. Pontresina for the skiing and the discount. All of it is expensive by any standard but Suvretta's.
The cantonal gains tax takes a sizeable share of a quick sale and a modest one after twenty years. Combined with the franc, the asset has paid for patient owners and punished the rest. The exit instrument shows both.
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