Buying in Switzerland: Lex Koller, cantonal quotas and the letting ban

Who does not need a permit

Swiss nationals buy freely. So do citizens of EU and EFTA states resident in Switzerland with a valid residence permit, and holders of a settlement permit of category C regardless of nationality.

Everybody else — that is, a buyer from a third country not living in Switzerland — falls inside the permit regime in full. That covers most people who ask us about Switzerland.

The division is fundamental, and it runs along status rather than money. No sum of money moves you across it.

How the permit regime works

The permit is granted by the canton, and not by every canton: holiday property may only be acquired in cantons and communes officially designated as tourist areas. In the business centres — Zurich, Geneva — a non-resident will not be sold holiday accommodation.

An annual national quota is capped and distributed between cantons; exhausting it means waiting for the following year. The statute limits both the habitable floor area and the plot area, and applies a one-property-per-household rule — buying a second in a spouse's or a child's name does not work, because the household is what counts.

Cantons generally impose a minimum holding period during which the property cannot be resold without good cause.

You cannot let it out

A non-resident acquires the property for their own holiday use. Seasonal letting while you are away is permitted; turning it into an income-producing asset is not. That removes the rental model outright, and it is why Switzerland is not comparable to the rest of this list on yield: it does not have one.

A separate restriction limits the share of second homes in a commune: where the share already exceeds the statutory threshold, new construction of second homes is prohibited. In the popular alpine valleys that threshold was passed long ago.

The two restrictions compound. Supply barely grows, the existing stock holds its value, and the choice available to a buyer is very narrow.

The one exception

Andermatt, in canton Uri, is a former garrison village that was losing its population and for whose comprehensive redevelopment the state granted a special regime: housing inside the project is sold to non-residents without the cantonal quota and without the usual permit.

The exception attaches to the project, not to the region — the next village along lives by the ordinary rules. And it concerns acquisition; the conditions of use are still governed by Swiss law and by the master plan's own rules.

It is a deliberate policy decision taken for a specific development objective, not a loophole.