Buying property in Chur: prices, rules and who can actually buy

Apartments in Chur were listed at an average asking price of €8,334.7/m² in Q3 2026 according to CASAFARI Area Insights (asking prices in euros from indexed listings, not transactions), down 7.5% on a year earlier in euro terms while the national BFS transaction index rose 3.5% in Q2 2026. Yet price is not the main gate: Chur is a primary-residence city inside a canton with a 0.51% vacancy rate, and under the Lex Koller only residents of Switzerland can in practice buy a home there.

Where Chur sits, and why it is a city market rather than a resort

Imagine a medical consultant living in Zürich who accepts a senior post at the Kantonsspital Graubünden. Looking for a three-room flat in Chur, they open the property portals expecting the broad choice of an Alpine town, and instead find a handful of listings across an entire city, priced around €8,335/m² on average in Q3 2026. Then comes the second surprise for anyone relocating from abroad: until that consultant holds Swiss residence, buying a flat in Chur is off the table under federal law.

Chur is the oldest town in Switzerland and the cantonal capital of Graubünden. Sitting in the Alpine Rhine valley along the A13 motorway, it is roughly 75 minutes from Zürich by SBB intercity train and serves as the hub of the Rhätische Bahn network to Arosa, the Engadin and Surselva. Its economy runs on year-round salaried employment: the cantonal administration and courts, the Kantonsspital, the Graubündner Kantonalbank and the university of applied sciences (FH Graubünden).

According to Chur in figures (city population statistics), the city counted 41,713 registered residents at 31 December 2025, up 534 people (+1.3%) over the year thanks to a net migration gain of 625 and the 1 January 2025 municipal merger with Tschiertschen-Praden, which added 312 residents (note that the federal BFS STATPOP permanent-resident definition puts the provisional end-2025 figure at 39,753). Although a cable car rises directly from the old town to the city's own ski and hiking area on Brambrüesch, second-home buyers head to Arosa, Lenzerheide or Flims-Laax. Chur itself sits below the 20% second-home threshold of the Second Homes Act (ZWG), including the merged Tschiertschen-Praden area, as confirmed by the ARE housing inventory and second-home shares in March 2025.

What do apartments cost in Chur in 2026?

In Q3 2026 (the quarter starting 1 July 2026, queried 23 October 2026), the average asking price for an apartment for sale in Chur was €8,334.7/m², according to CASAFARI Area Insights for location id 3684184. Every figure in this series represents asking prices in euros from indexed listings with outliers excluded, rather than completed transaction prices.

Active coverage in the CASAFARI series begins in Q2 2025. Across the six quarters of real data from Q2 2025 to Q3 2026, apartment asking prices in euros averaged about €8,824/m². Taken as a purely illustrative calculation, a 90 m² flat priced at the Q3 2026 average of €8,334.7/m² corresponds to an asking price of roughly €750,100 before purchase taxes and fees.

Quarter	Average asking price (€/m², apartments)	Quarter-on-quarter change
Q2 2025	€8,555.9	—
Q3 2025	€9,015.0	+5.4%
Q4 2025	€9,243.9	+2.5%
Q1 2026	€9,399.1	+1.7%
Q2 2026	€8,397.7	-10.7%
Q3 2026	€8,334.7	-0.8%

Are prices in Chur falling? Asking prices in euros versus Swiss transactions in francs

At first glance, the euro asking-price series shows a pullback: Q3 2026 at €8,334.7/m² is down 7.5% year on year against Q3 2025 (€9,015/m²), down 11.3% from the Q1 2026 peak of €9,399.1/m², and 2.6% lower than the first covered quarter in Q2 2025 (€8,555.9/m²). Over the same period, the official national transaction benchmark—the BFS Swiss Residential Property Price Index, Q2 2026 (IMPI, published 30 July 2026)—reached 127.7 points (Q4 2019 = 100), rising 0.7% quarter on quarter (+1.6% for apartments) and 3.5% year on year.

The two figures measure different things and both can be true at once. First, CASAFARI Area Insights tracks asking prices on portals in a city of around 41,700 residents where quarterly listing counts are small (and where location id 3684184 carries a not in_analytics flag for sparse volume); when a handful of expensive new-build apartments sell or leave the portals, the average asking price drops even if no seller cuts their price. Second, the CASAFARI series is denominated in euros for comparison across CASAFARI property market trends across Europe, whereas Chur properties trade in Swiss francs, so EUR/CHF exchange-rate movements feed directly into the euro curve. With cantonal vacancy at a 30-year low of 0.51% in June 2026, the drop since Q1 2026 should be read as asking prices coming off a spring 2026 high rather than a soft residential market.

Can a foreigner buy a home in Chur? The Lex Koller in practice

Under the Federal Act on the Acquisition of Real Estate by Persons Abroad (BewG), known as the Lex Koller, non-residents require a cantonal permit to buy residential property, and holiday-apartment permits are issued only in designated tourist municipalities with cantonal quotas, as set out by the Federal Office of Justice on the Lex Koller (2026). Because Chur is an administrative capital rather than a designated holiday-home resort, non-resident foreigners cannot in practice buy a flat or house there (buyers should always confirm specific parcel rules with the Grundbuchinspektorat Graubünden).

For international buyers who actually move to Switzerland, the door is open. EU and EFTA nationals who hold a Swiss residence permit (such as a B or C permit) and live in Switzerland, as well as third-country nationals holding a C settlement permit, are not classed as persons abroad under the Lex Koller and may purchase a primary residence in Chur on the same footing as Swiss citizens. The local market is well accustomed to international residents: at 31 December 2025, Chur had 10,192 foreign nationals on its register, or about 24% of the population, led by German, Portuguese and Italian citizens (Stadt Chur). Commercial real estate sits outside the residential restrictions of the Lex Koller.

What does a purchase cost on top of the price?

When budgeting for a purchase in Chur, the main known levy is the municipal property transfer tax (Handänderungssteuer). According to the City of Chur page on the transfer tax (consulted 23 October 2026), the city charges 2% of the official market value or objective transfer value, payable by the buyer, while the canton of Graubünden levies no cantonal transfer tax of its own. Note that several third-party guides online still quote 1.5%, which was the rate prior to the 2013 revision of the city tax law. Transfers by inheritance, gift, or between spouses and between parents and children are exempt.

On top of the 2% transfer tax, buyers and sellers share notary and land-registry fees (Grundbuchgebühren), and sellers face the cantonal real estate gains tax (Grundstückgewinnsteuer), whose rate depends on the profit and holding period; ask a local notary for an exact fee schedule before signing. For financing in Swiss francs, Swiss banks follow standard domestic practice, requiring buyers to put down substantial own equity—part of it outside pension-fund funds—and testing affordability against an imputed interest rate.

Why is there so little to buy? Scarcity and the 29 November 2026 vote

Anyone searching for a flat in Chur quickly runs into physical scarcity. At the 1 June 2026 federal count, the vacancy rate across the canton of Graubünden fell to 0.51%—just 962 vacant dwellings, the lowest level in about 30 years—according to Südostschweiz on the 2026 vacancy count in Graubünden (compared with a national Swiss vacancy rate of 1.0% or 48,455 dwellings at 1 June 2025, per BFS). Steady employment at the hospital, the cantonal administration and FH Graubünden absorbs rentals and for-sale stock alike. Note that because CASAFARI Area Insights does not supply a rental series for location id 3684184, we do not quote an indicative gross rental yield for Chur.

That shortage has put housing policy on the ballot. On 29 November 2026, Chur voters decide between the popular initiative 'Für bezahlbare Wohnungen', which demands that one third of newly created residential floor space be let at cost rent, and a counter-proposal from the centre-right parties that restricts affordable-housing quotas to land owned by the city itself, as detailed in coverage of the two housing proposals Chur votes on in November 2026 (October 2026). According to the initiative committee, private owners of existing homes are not directly affected, though the outcome will shape how developers price and build new residential projects in the city.

How to work the Chur market with CASAFARI data

In a city where quarterly numbers can swing on a dozen listings, relying on a broad cantonal average is rarely enough. Relocation advisers, wealth managers and CASAFARI for investors assessing Swiss secondary cities use three tools to move from the macro picture to a specific street:

• Track the city series: Use CASAFARI Area Insights to monitor the sale_apartment_psqm asking-price series for Chur (location id 3684184) alongside neighbouring Rhine valley municipalities.
• Price an individual flat: Because a city-wide average of €8,334.7/m² blends historic old-town buildings with modern Rhine-valley blocks, run a Comparables and market study for a specific flat in Chur (or via the Comparables and valuation API documentation) to benchmark an exact floor area and condition.
• Catch scarce stock: With cantonal vacancy at 0.51%, agents use Property Sourcing to find the few listings that appear across fragmented Swiss portals in one deduplicated view.

Data teams and developers who want to reproduce the Chur asking-price series directly in their own models can query sale_apartment_psqm for location id 3684184 via the Area Insights API documentation (reproduce the Chur series), and create an account on the CASAFARI platform to manage API keys and tokens.