Luxury modular homes in Switzerland

Two questions to settle before you design anything

In most countries feasibility begins with the plot. In Switzerland it begins with the buyer and the commune, because two pieces of federal law can stop a project that is otherwise perfect. Any adviser who takes you straight to floor plans has skipped the part that matters.

Can you acquire the property? Federal law on the acquisition of immovable property by persons abroad — universally known as Lex Koller — requires authorisation for non-resident foreign buyers of residential property. Holiday-home authorisations exist but are limited by an annual federal quota allocated among designated tourist cantons, and they come with restrictions on floor area and on how the property can later be let or resold. Nationals of the EU or EFTA who are resident in Switzerland with a valid permit are generally treated like Swiss residents when buying a primary residence. The rules are detailed, the practice is cantonal, and the answer depends on your nationality, your residence status and the commune — which is why it has to come from a Swiss notary or lawyer, first, in writing.

Can a new second home be authorised there at all? The federal second-homes act, which implemented the 2012 popular initiative, prohibits communes where second homes already exceed twenty per cent of the housing stock from authorising new ones. Those are, almost by definition, the alpine communes buyers are most drawn to. If the plot sits in one and the house would be a second home, no amount of design quality will produce a permit; if it would be your primary residence, or if the commune is below the threshold, the picture changes completely.

Cantonal and communal permission

There is no national building permit in Switzerland. Building law is cantonal, and twenty-six cantons means twenty-six planning acts, each applied through a commune with its own zoning plan and building ordinance. What you may build — plot ratio, setbacks, height, number of storeys, roof pitch, often the facade material itself — is set by the commune, and in alpine communes those rules are frequently prescriptive about appearance: a pitched roof, timber cladding, local stone, a particular window proportion.

Two features of the procedure matter for planning your time. The first is that land outside the designated building zone is, for practical purposes, not available for new housing; the exceptions in federal spatial planning law are narrow and do not extend to a new villa with a view. Confirm the zoning before you buy — this is the most expensive mistake made in this market. The second is that the application is published and neighbours have a formal period to object. An objection is not rare, it is not necessarily fatal, and it is the single largest source of programme risk on a Swiss project. A design that respects the commune's own idiom, and a conversation with the neighbours before the notice goes up, are worth more than any legal argument afterwards.

The practical consequence for a modular project is simple: the design has to be developed for that commune's ordinance from the outset. A house conceived for the Costa del Sol will not be permitted in a Valais mountain commune, and adapting it afterwards is more expensive than designing it correctly once.

The SIA norms — not the Eurocodes directly

Swiss structural design follows the SIA 260 to 267 series published by the Swiss Society of Engineers and Architects. The series is built on the same basis as the Eurocodes, but it is the Swiss standard in its own right, with Swiss values, and a calculation package prepared for another country is not transferable. SIA 261 governs the actions on the structure, and in Switzerland those actions are severe.

• Snow is usually the governing load, and it climbs steeply with altitude. The design snow load on an alpine plot can be several times the value used on a Spanish coastal site. It drives the frame, the roof structure, the span strategy and therefore the whole plan — which is why a mountain house has to be engineered as a mountain house rather than adapted into one.
• Snow management is architecture, not detailing. Where snow accumulates, where it sheds, where it slides onto a terrace or an entrance, and how ice damming at the eaves is prevented all have to be resolved in the design.
• Seismic action is real in parts of the country. Valais, Basel and parts of Grisons carry meaningful seismic loading under SIA 261, which affects the structural system and the connections between modules.
• Frost depth and ground conditions govern the foundations, and on a steep plot the retaining and access works are frequently a larger item than clients expect.

Energy: MuKEn, the cantons and Minergie

Energy requirements for buildings are cantonal too, harmonised through the model regulations known as MuKEn, which each canton enacts in its own version and on its own timetable. In practice a new dwelling has to demonstrate a high-performance envelope and a heating strategy that is largely or entirely non-fossil — many cantons now restrict or exclude fossil heating in new build — so a heat pump is the normal answer, ground-source on plots where the geology allows it. A GEAK energy certificate documents the result.

Above the legal minimum sits Minergie, a voluntary Swiss label with several levels. It is not compulsory and it is not cheap to reach, but it is recognised by the Swiss market in a way that few national labels are, and it holds its value at resale. The binding constraint for the higher levels is airtightness, and that is precisely what factory manufacture delivers reliably: a sealed, sequenced, inspected envelope rather than a series of junctions detailed in the open on a cold morning. For an alpine house the envelope also has to cope with large diurnal and seasonal temperature swings, deep frost, intense UV at altitude and driving rain — while houses at low altitude in Ticino or the Geneva basin need summer shading as seriously as any Mediterranean project.

Customs, transport and the last kilometre

Switzerland sits outside both the European Union and its customs union, so unlike a delivery to Germany or France a Swiss project has a border in it. Modules travel by road from Spain through France, or through France and Germany, are cleared at the Swiss frontier, and continue inland under cantonal transport authorisation.

• Customs clearance is a scheduled event, not a formality. Import declarations, classification and Swiss import VAT on the goods are prepared in advance and built into the delivery programme, because an oversized convoy cannot wait at a border.
• Oversized transport is authorised canton by canton and route by route. Alpine roads, tunnel clearances, pass gradients and hairpins constrain width and height far more than distance does, and a route that works in the lowlands may not exist above a certain altitude.
• The delivery window can be seasonal. Pass closures and winter conditions on mountain approaches mean the transport date is sometimes fixed by the calendar, which in turn fixes when the specification has to be frozen.
• Craning on a slope is the usual binding constraint. On a steep plot, where the crane can stand and what it can reach often determines the module sizes — so the access study happens during engineering, not after.

None of this is a reason to avoid modular construction in Switzerland; it is the reason to plan it properly. The compensating advantage is substantial: the Swiss building season at altitude is short, and a house that arrives finished uses it far better than one that has to be built in place.

Tax and the cost of ownership

Building a house is work on immovable property, taxed where the land is, so the Swiss treatment governs. Swiss VAT applies on the import of the modules and on the works performed in Switzerland. On top of that, acquisition and ownership carry Swiss-specific items worth understanding before you commit: property transfer tax and notary and land-registry fees, which are set cantonally and vary considerably; annual taxation of the imputed rental value of a property you occupy; wealth tax on the property's value; and, for a non-resident owner, the interaction with your own country's tax position.

We set out the treatment we have assumed in the project breakdown, and we ask every client to have it confirmed by a Swiss adviser. Cantonal variation in this market is wide enough that a general answer is worth very little.

What we handle, and what stays with you

One point of contact, in English, from first look to handover: zoning and feasibility review, coordination with your Swiss lawyer on the acquisition questions, bespoke architecture developed to the commune's building ordinance, structural design to the SIA norms for the actual altitude and seismic zone, the cantonal energy verification, the permit application through the commune's own procedure and in its own language, factory manufacturing with scheduled reporting and a visit before the modules are closed, customs clearance, transport authorisations, assembly and connections supervised by our own team, and the completion documentation in order.

The wider service and specification are set out on the turnkey luxury modular homes page and in the catalogue and quality specifications; how a cross-border project runs step by step is on international luxury modular homes, and the comparison across markets on luxury modular homes in Europe.

Frequently asked questions