In April 2026, the Swiss Federal Council opened a formal consultation on tightening Lex Koller — the federal law that has restricted foreign residential property ownership in Switzerland since 1983. The proposed changes would reduce holiday home quotas in cantons, reintroduce authorisation requirements for sales between foreign nationals, and bar non-EU and non-EFTA buyers from purchasing investment property outright. Switzerland is systematically narrowing the window for international Alpine property buyers, not opening it.
Against that backdrop, consider what Knight Frank's Alpine Property Report 2026 found: prices across the Alps have risen 23% in five years, the Knight Frank Alpine Property Index rose 3.3% year-on-year, and 92% of high-net-worth individuals surveyed expressed strong or moderate confidence in Alpine property's long-term value. Investor conviction in the Alps as an asset class is not in question. The only question is where to deploy it — and increasingly, the answer points to France.
Three Alpine Markets, Three Very Different Rules
Switzerland: Quotas, Caps and Tightening Further
Lex Koller has always made Switzerland a complex proposition for international buyers. Holiday homes in ski resorts fall under the strictest category: purchasers from outside Switzerland are limited to nationally capped quotas of approximately 1,500 permits per year, spread across cantons. Properties must be in officially designated tourist communes, cannot exceed a habitable area of around 200 square metres, and carry a five-year resale restriction. As Knight Frank's Alpine Property Report 2026 noted, the 200m² rule "can frustrate buyers seeking large family homes", and workarounds such as divided chalets or commercial licences are "becoming increasingly rare".
The April 2026 Lex Koller proposals tighten this further. According to the Swiss Federal Council's announcement reported by SWI swissinfo.ch, cantonal quotas for holiday home sales to foreigners will be cut, resales between foreign nationals will require fresh authorisation, and non-EU/EFTA nationals buying principally for investment will face new barriers. The stated aim is to address Switzerland's housing shortage — the effect for international Alpine buyers is further supply compression at precisely the moment wider Alpine demand is rising.
Austria: The Tyrolean Door Is Largely Shut
Austria's prime ski regions operate under the Freizeitwohnsitz (leisure residence) system — a framework of second-home restrictions most stringently applied in Tirol, Salzburg and Vorarlberg, where the most sought-after ski resorts are located. Municipalities in Tirol operate quota systems that cap the proportion of properties designated as leisure residences. In practice, many communes in established resort towns have reached those limits, making new approvals exceptionally difficult. Non-EU nationals face an additional step: a Grundverkehr approval process with the district land transaction authority, which assesses each application individually and is not guaranteed to succeed. Enforcement in established resort towns has tightened, with buyers who use a leisure-designated property inconsistently with that designation facing financial penalties.
The practical result: most of Austria's genuinely desirable Alpine ski towns are effectively inaccessible to non-EU buyers seeking holiday home ownership, and even EU citizens face material restrictions in high-demand communes.
France: No Queue, No Quota, No Restriction
France operates under a fundamentally different regime. There are no restrictions on foreign nationals purchasing French property — buyers from any country in the world acquire a French Alpine apartment on precisely the same legal terms as a French resident. No quotas, no maximum floor area, no resale lock-in period, no cantonal authority approval required. Knight Frank's French Alps specialist summarised this directly in the Alpine Property Report 2026: "Choice. Buyers have unrestricted access to properties across the market, a freedom not available in Switzerland due to stricter regulations."
That open-access policy sits alongside a structural supply constraint that supports values. France's Loi Montagne severely limits new construction in Alpine communes, meaning the total number of properties in any given resort is broadly fixed. The supply dynamics are examined in detail in The Supply Squeeze: Why French Alps Ski Property Stock Is Running Out. The buyer-access side is equally significant and tends to receive less attention in direct Alpine market comparisons.
"Modern, energy-efficient properties provide excellent value for money, making France the European leader in alpine construction." — Knight Frank Alpine Property Report 2026
The New-Build Pipeline: Where France Pulls Furthest Ahead
Neither Switzerland nor Austria offers a meaningful pipeline of new-build ski apartments to international buyers. Switzerland's 20% cap on second homes in tourist communes — passed by referendum in 2012 — has effectively frozen new-build supply in most ski resorts. Austria's Freizeitwohnsitz quotas produce a similar effect in prime resort towns. In both countries, an international buyer seeking new-build stock in a recognised ski zone will almost invariably find no legal route to purchase.
France's position is the opposite. Developer activity across more than 30 French Alpine resorts is active, with new-build ski properties available at a wide range of price points. Current developer pricing data illustrates the breadth of choice on offer.
In Morzine — a Portes du Soleil resort with strong year-round demand — new-build one-bedroom apartments start from around €360,000, with developer pricing averaging around €10,100 per square metre across all new-build unit sizes. Two- and three-bedroom apartments range from around €399,000 upwards, with larger units reaching into seven figures in premium locations.
In Les Gets, within the same linked ski domain, new-build one-bedroom units begin from around €215,000 — among the most accessible new-build entry points in any international-standard linked ski resort in the Alps. Developer pricing averages around €10,800 per square metre across the market. For buyers targeting the sub-€500,000 bracket — the price range Knight Frank identifies as the target for 44% of high-net-worth Alpine buyers — Les Gets currently offers more active new-build choice than any comparable Swiss or Austrian alternative. The Les Gets property guide sets out the specific development zones in detail.
At the premium end, Courchevel's new-build market starts from around €473,000 for a one-bedroom apartment and averages around €15,500 per square metre across all new-build unit types — directly comparable to the pricing of Swiss ski resort properties, but without the Lex Koller permit, without the 200m² area cap, and without the five-year resale restriction.
The TVA Advantage: A 20% Rebate No Alpine Rival Offers
There is one further advantage specific to France's new-build market that neither Switzerland nor Austria can replicate. Buyers who purchase a new-build French Alpine apartment through an approved rental management scheme — under the LMNP (Loueur Meublé Non Professionnel) framework — are eligible to reclaim the 20% TVA charged on the purchase price, provided they meet rental commitment requirements and hold the property for the minimum term. On a new-build apartment purchased at around €500,000, that represents a rebate of around €83,000, materially reducing the net acquisition cost. The full mechanics are covered in Domosno's guide to VAT recovery on French ski properties. No equivalent scheme exists for non-resident buyers in Switzerland or Austria.
The 2030 Olympics: A French-Only Infrastructure Tailwind
Knight Frank's 2026 Alpine Property Report highlighted Cortina d'Ampezzo's price surge ahead of the 2026 Winter Games. The equivalent effect for the French Alps arrives four years later. The 2030 Winter Olympics has been awarded to the Alpes Françaises — with competition venues including Courchevel and Méribel, Val d'Isère and Tignes, and the Hautes-Alpes corridor. Infrastructure investment is already flowing into French Alpine transport links, lift systems and resort facilities. The 2030 Olympics property effect is covered in detail on Domosno, but the core point is straightforward: no equivalent tailwind is attached to Austrian or Swiss Alpine property over the same period.
The Investment Case in Full
The Knight Frank Alpine Property Report 2026 establishes the underlying conviction clearly: 23% five-year growth, a rising index, 73% winter occupancy across French resorts, and near-universal investor confidence in long-term Alpine values. The French Alps covers the full spectrum from accessible Portes du Soleil new-builds to the most expensive residential addresses in continental Europe.
What France offers — and what Switzerland is progressively restricting, and Austria has largely foreclosed — is the combination of a fully open market, no ownership quotas, an active new-build pipeline with developer pricing from around €215,000, a uniquely French TVA recovery mechanism, and the infrastructure investment of an incoming Winter Olympics. For an international buyer who has identified Alpine property as a long-term asset allocation and wants to act on that conviction without queuing for a Swiss cantonal permit or an Austrian Grundverkehr approval, the French Alps is the only market that answers every requirement at once.
