Ski Property Index

The latest results of the Knight Frank Prime Ski Property Index underline a broadly stable market environment with only 13% percentage points separating the strongest and weakest performer.

Val d’Isere and Meribel lead the 2015 Ski Property Index recording annual price growth of 5.8% and 4.5% respectively. Prime sales activity in the French Alps is focussed between €1.5 and €2.5 million with resorts such as Chamonix and Courchevel 1550 increasingly popular.

Indeed, the number of sales completed in Megeve in the first half of 2015 was double the number of sales agreed during the whole of 2014 while previous uncertainty in the Swiss market is giving way to renewed optimism as clarity emerges surrounding taxation and the second home cap.

The report points out that currency movements have played a pivotal role in determining demand across the region. For many, having decided to buy a ski home, choosing where to buy and weighing up the pros and cons of the different ski resorts can be a challenging task.

Overall, the index has proved largely static with only a marginal 1% fall recorded in the year to June 2015. Val d’Isere and Meribel lead the 2015 rankings with the price of a typical four or five bedroom chalet in each resort rising by 5.8% and 4.5% respectively in the year to June.

The report explains that the length of Val d’Isere’s ski season explains its long- standing appeal, particularly with British buyers. Few other Alpine resorts can guarantee sufficient snow to ski during both the Christmas and Easter holiday periods.

In real price terms, the exclusive resorts of Courchevel 1850 and Gstaad in Switzerland come out on top, with prime prices typically around €25,000 and CHF30,000 per square meter respectively. A prime ski chalet in Gstaad is, on this basis, four times the price of an equivalent property in the French resort of St Gervais.

In the French Alps the super prime market  of €15 million plus has slowed, partly because of the absence of Russian buyers but also because a number of ultra high net worth individuals (UHNWIs) are reviewing their budgets and considering spreading their capital across multiple properties or assets in different locations.